Canada Research Chairs

Dr. Andrea Fatona’s research program builds on five years (2021–2026) of foundational work she led at the Centre for the Study of Black Canadian Diaspora (CSBCD) during her first term as a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair. Dr. Fatona’s research explores how the digital humanities and innovative curatorial practices can enhance access to and discoverability of works by racialized cultural producers. Rooted in interdisciplinary and collaborative methodologies, this work develops strategies and methods that bridge theory and practice. Her research program continues to be driven by the central question: How can new approaches to cataloguing, dissemination, and pedagogy position Black cultural production at the forefront of contemporary art and cultural discourse? By advancing both scholarly knowledge and practical tools within curatorial practices and the digital humanities, this research aims to transform how Black cultural contributions are documented, shared, and valued within broader artistic and cultural narratives.  

Dr. Fatona’s research program seeks to address the erasure of contemporary Black cultural producers from the histories of who produces art from within a uniquely Canadian context. The program’s goal is to advance understandings of Black Canadian curatorial practices and cultural production while building a sustainable digital infrastructure that ensures the long-term visibility of the works of Black Canadian curators and artists. It consists of two interrelated projects: (i) Re-coding Black Canada, and (ii) The State of Blackness Platform prototype (SBP).  

Re-coding Black Canada aims to address what scholars (Benjamin 2019, Nazir 2023, Buolamwini 2023, Jain et al. 2023) have referred to as ‘the coded gaze’ – racial and gender biases in computer code – through the development of inclusive software that will improve access to Black diasporic/racialized visual and discursive materials. Working in collaboration with

Lichen Community Systems, Fatona and her research team are developing customized open-source software and new metadata co-creation methods to improve the discoverability of works by Black Canadian artists and curators and embed Black Canadian perspectives into the computational and archival system.  

The State of Blackness Platform prototype (SBP) will be a digital repository documenting Black Canadian curatorial projects from 1987 to the early 2000s. The SBP will increase the visibility and accessibility of the work of Black curators, artists, and critics in Canada who have been historically excluded from dominant narratives of Canadian visual culture.  It will centrally compile a range of materials – documentation of exhibitions, curators and artists bios, commissioned essays, analytic writings, audio-visual interviews with curators and artists, links to external databases/platforms, and data visualizations. It will integrate contemporary Black curators into the historical record of exhibition-making in Canada, challenging erasures and reshaping the discourse on Canadian art histories. The significance of the SBP prototype lies in its focus on discoverability, accessibility, dynamism, its relational structure, the outward connections it will make to pertinent sites (galleries, artist-run centres, museums, personal websites), and its concern with practices of community knowledge co-creation. To date, there is no other platform that makes visible and provides access to works of contemporary Black curators and art writers in Canada. The project is significant for positioning the works of Black cultural producers as active participants in, and valuable contributors to, the culturescape of Canada.