Noor Alé

Arctic/Amazon: Networks of Global Indigeneity: Worlds in Relation – Hemispherical Approaches to Curating 

Arctic/Amazon: Networks of Global Indigeneity was a major exhibition, symposium, catalogue, and a series of knowledge exchange workshops that foregrounded the ways in which Indigenous contemporary artists addressed the themes of land relations, traditional knowledge, contact zones, and cosmologies in the circumpolar Arctic and Amazon. Although geographically removed, these regions are interconnected: both share histories involving social, cultural, economic, and aesthetic entanglements between Indigenous Peoples and European colonizers. The resulting contact zones are sites of adaptation, exploration, colonization, and exploitation, and today they inspire new forms of protectionism and self-determination. By way of these encounters between Indigenous artists, knowledge keepers, and writers, the project forged connections where Indigenous epistemologies emerged to tackle major issues of our present and future, particularly the intersections between land relations and climate change. In the context of the exhibition, it created a world where commonalities and solidarities across northern and southern hemispheres converged. The exhibition conceptually transformed the galleries at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto, into a contact zone that underscored the ontological diversity and multiplicity necessary to live in a world that can encompass multiple worlds. It presented an opportunity to engage in relational curatorial methodologies that engendered transcultural solidarities.  

Biography 

Noor Alé is a curator, art historian, and writer whose exhibitions and roles span international contemporary art institutions. Her practice delves into the intersections of contemporary art with geopolitics, cosmologies, and land relations. Through a transhistorical lens her work unearths convergences that engender solidarities across ideological divisions. She has held positions at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Abu Dhabi Project, New York; and Art Dubai. At The Power Plant, she curated Abdelkader Benchamma: Solastalgia: Archaeologies of Loss, Sasha Huber: YOU NAME IT, Hiwa K: Do you remember what you are burning? She also co-curated Anna Boghiguian: Time of Change, and was the institutional curator for Arctic/Amazon: Networks of Global Indigeneity. She was awarded curatorial residencies at SOMA, Mexico City; Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Association of Art Museum Curators, New York; and the Shanghai Curators Lab. She holds an MA in Art History from The Courtauld Institute of Art, and a BA in Art History from the University of Guelph.