Research Chair Biography
As Concordia University Research Chair (CURC, Tier 1) in Critical Curatorial Studies and Decolonizing Art Institutions, Dr Alice Ming Wai Jim and her team will examine the impact of recent social justice movements, decolonizing methodologies, and the new field of critical race museology on the role of the curator. Professor of Contemporary Art in the Department of Art History and previously Tier 2 CURC in Ethnocultural Art Histories, 2017–2022, Dr Jim has galvanized a new generation of students and scholars in the study of ethnocultural art histories that extends to curatorial studies and critical race museology. Her research on diasporic art in Canada and contemporary Asian art has generated new dialogues within and between the fields of ethnocultural and global art histories, critical race theory, media arts, and curatorial studies. Her current SSHRC-funded curated oral histories project, Afrofuturism and Black Lives Matter in the Canadian art scene, is part of a larger examination of the convergence of Indigenous and Afro-Asian futurism in contemporary art. Prior to her appointment at Concordia, Dr Jim was Curator of the Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Centre A where she curated the group exhibition and symposium Redress Express: Chinese Restaurants and the Head Tax Issue in Canadian Art about the era before and during the Chinese Exclusion Act (1923–1947) which was passed 100 years ago this year (2023). She also convened the international 2004 conference and exhibition Mutations<>Connections: Cultural (Ex)Changes in Asian Diasporas, whose 20th anniversary will be marked and revisited as part of the new CURC’s research activities to interrogate global Asian diasporic art and curatorial developments. Dr Jim is also founding co-editor-in-chief of the international journal Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas (ADVA), published by Brill (Leiden, NL) in association with the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art (Concordia University) and the Asian/Pacific/American Institute (New York University). She is a member of the College of New Scholars of the Royal Society of Canada and recipient in 2022 of UAAC’s inaugural Award for the advancement of equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility. https://www.concordia.ca/finearts/art-history/faculty.html?fpid=alice-ming-wai-jim
Extended Biography
Since 2000, Dr Jim has curated exhibitions of over sixty artists of colour and Indigenous artists and organized major scholarly events within academic settings and for the broader arts community in Canada and internationally. Co-investigator of the SSHRC and FQRSC-funded Trans-Atlantic Platform: Social Innovation project, Worlding Public Cultures (2020–2023), she organized a team of Montreal faculty and students from Concordia, UQAM and UdM to participate in international academies in Ottawa, Amsterdam, London, Heidelberg, and Montreal, convening WPC 2023, Worlding Tiohtià:ke/ Montreal: Bridging Knowledges, Practices, and Beings to critically examine the ways in which global, transnational and transcultural public narratives are being represented in universities, museums, and other spaces of art and culture.
She is also a collaborator on the SSHRC Partnership Grant project, Thinking Through the Museum: A Partnership Approach to Curating Difficult Knowledge in Public (2021–2028), in the Critical Race Museology Cluster.
In 2022, Jim co-organized the Pacific Basin Institute’s Decolonizing Art and Curatorial Practice Lecture Series and was a core member of Rutgers University’s’ Decolonizing Curatorial and Museum Studies and Public Humanities Project. A core scholar of the NYU Global Asia/Pacific Art Exchange (GAX) since 2014, she co-convened GAX 2019 Tiohtiá:ke (Montreal): Asian Indigenous Relations in Contemporary Art, which brought together sixty Asian diasporic and Indigenous researchers, artists, and students from Samoa, Hawaii, Australia, across Canada, and the US to investigate the topic of curating hospitality and care discourses in contemporary art.
In 2018, she coedited the special issue “What is Critical Curating?” for RACAR with Dr Marie Fraser. In 2019, Jim was a visiting professor for Summer Institute 2019: Future Commons at Tai Kwun Contemporary in Hong Kong and co-chair of the Artistic Committee (Exhibition) for ISEA2020 Montreal: Why Sentience? (International Symposium on Electronic Art).
Jim founded EAHR (Ethnocultural Art Histories Research Group) in 2011 and is founding member of the EAHR|Media Working Group 2019-2022, and the South South: Critiques of Global South Working Group 2022-2024, both in affiliation with the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture at Concordia. Jim is also Adjunct Professor in Graduate Studies at OCAD University, Toronto (2021-2024).
Jim is recipient of a 2022 Academic Leadership Award and was inducted into the 2020 Provost Circle of Distinction, Concordia University.
Alice (she/her) is a second-generation Anglophone Chinese Canadian racialized visible minority born and raised in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.
Land Acknowledgement
I acknowledge that Concordia Universityis located on unceded Indigenous lands.The Kanien’kehá:ka Nation isrecognized as the custodians of the lands and waters we now callMontreal. Tiohtiá:ke (Montreal)is historically known as a gatheringplace for many First Nations. Today, it is home to a diversepopulation of Indigenous and other peoples. We respect thecontinued connections with the past, present and future in ourongoing relationships with Indigenous and other peoples within theMontreal community.
Je reconnais que l’Université Concordia est située en territoireautochtone non cédé et que la nation Kanien’kehá:ka est la gardiennedes terres et des eaux formant aujourd’hui Montréal. Le nom d’origine dece territoire est Tiohtiá:ke. Celui-ci est historiquement connu commeun lieu de rassemblement pour de nombreuses Premières Nations.Aujourd’hui, la ville accueille une populationdiversifiée d’Autochtones et de gens d’autres origines. L’UniversitéConcordia respecte les liens passés, actuels et futurs desPremières Nations avec ces terres et en tient compte dans sesrelations continues avec les Autochtones et les autres membres dela communauté montréalaise.
