Community engaged curator, scholar, writer.
Welcome to my site! I'm Charissa, an art curator, scholar, and writer based in Southern California. With a decade of experience in university teaching, critical arts research, curation, and editorial work developed in Montreal, Canada, I'm drawn to projects that bridge academic scholarship with public engagement - particularly work that centers diverse voices and lived experiences. Through exhibitions, publications, and digital platforms, I'm committed to making contemporary art accessible, impactful, and relevant. Feel free to have a look around!
Professional Practice
I am a curator, researcher, and writer working in contemporary arts and institutional practices. My approach is collaborative, ethical, and community-led, shaped by my background in circumpolar and Indigenous arts.
My work is grounded in Engaged Research—an approach that weaves together scholarship, curation, and community collaboration while prioritizing cultural sovereignty. I examine how artists center cultural sovereignty and resurgence within institutional spaces, creating new possibilities for presence, belonging, and agency. This research directly informs my curatorial practice and ongoing work with artists and institutions.
Over the past decade, I've co-curated significant exhibitions including Among All These Tundras and Tusarnitut! (Montreal Museum of Fine Arts), while managing the Arctic Arts Summit Digital Platform and contributing to Inuit Art Quarterly. My practice spans accessible programming, community-centered exhibitions, and digital strategies that connect diverse audiences with contemporary art. I'm committed to projects that remain meaningful and connected to the social contexts in which art operates and matters.
Focus
Areas
My work explores contemporary art across photography and lens-based media, performance, visual culture studies, language and poetics, and institutional critique. I specialize in collaborative approaches that help cultural institutions engage with diverse communities, reimagine their institutional memory, and center cultural sovereignty. Examples throughout this site illustrate these interconnected interests and my commitment to creating meaningful art experiences.
Ongoing Engagements
I envision this website as more than a portfolio—an space for active engagement with the ever-evolving landscape of contemporary art. Here, I share my ongoing explorations of emerging artistic sites, works, and practices, and I am excited to connect with fellow scholars, artists, and institutions. Please explore my curatorial projects and publications, and feel free to contact me regarding collaborative opportunities that advance critical conversations in contemporary art.
Notes from my academic journey…
My path began at New York University studying Anthropology, which opened my eyes to how art and museums function as sites where knowledge and value are created and exchanged. This early fascination with institutional dynamics continues to inform how I approach curatorial projects and public engagement today.
For graduate studies, I joined Concordia University's interuniversity bilingual PhD program in Art History—a collaboration across three Montreal universities that required bilingualism in English and French. This cross-institutional, multilingual environment taught me to navigate complex partnerships and communicate across different cultural and intellectual traditions—skills that prove invaluable when coordinating international exhibitions and working with diverse constituencies.
During my Master's, I focused on the late Greenlandic Inuit and Danish artist Pia Arke (1958-2007), whose practice combined institutional critique with creative writing and photography. Her work opened my eyes to experimental approaches for exploring the personal among larger cultural histories, and to how artistic interventions in institutions carry historical import and significance. This research taught me how to write critically and see humor and wit as decolonial tools; it showed me the aesthetic dimension of political work—that politics doesn't have to be apart from aesthetics. These insights now inform my curatorial and editorial practice.
My doctoral research (2016-2023) traced how artists, writers, and curators have transformed circumpolar exhibition practices over five decades. I received a competitive FRQSC Doctoral Scholarship and ethics clearance for a dissertation, which examined how Arctic Indigenous poetics—language, storytelling, and textual interventions—divert the historic 'Arctic Gaze,' repurposing it as a decolonizing instrument for cultural resurgence and environmental stewardship. Working with my supervisor Dr. Heather Igloliorte, I developed collaborative methods that center artist voices, approaches that shape how I work with institutions today.
My postdoctoral research at McGill University (2024-2025) explored how artists use exhibition spaces to enact Indigenous spatial sovereignty and create new possibilities for social engagement. I'm particularly interested in how temporary art interventions can inform permanent Indigenous-led architecture—insights that shape how I approach exhibition design and institutional transformation.
As 2024 Graduate Valedictorian for Concordia's Faculty of Fine Arts—an honor recognizing academic excellence alongside engagement and collaborative scholarship—I was celebrated for research that centered ethical practices and meaningful cultural exchange. This recognition reflects my commitment to scholarship that extends beyond academia to create tangible benefits for the people whose knowledge and art I engage with, an approach that continues to guide everything I do.