## Breadcrumb 1. [Home](/index%2Ephp/) 2. [Overview](/index%2Ephp/academics) 3. [Faculty Members](/index%2Ephp/academics/explore-faculty) 4. [Suzanne Morrissette](/index%2Ephp/markdownify/node/3976) # Suzanne Morrissette ![](https://ultima7-its.ocadu.ca/bios/smorrissette/portrait) smorrissette@ocadu.ca Faculty Information Associate Professor, Tenured Faculty of Arts & Science Areas of ExpertiseIndigenous art ethical relationality equity practices and history arts-based research curatorial studies critical race studies Canadian art socially engaged practice artist run centre history and culture Suzanne Morrissette, PhD (she/her) is a Red River Métis artist, curator, and scholar who is currently based out of Toronto. She is currently Associate Professor at OCAD University where she teaches in the Indigenous Visual Culture BFA, and in the Criticism and Curatorial Practices MFA programs. As an arts-based researcher Suzanne’s interests include: reciprocal and gift economies, equity and diversity, as well as culturally informed governance models in the arts. As an artist she works across media to produce artworks that reflect upon metaphors for love and the unknowable, and motherhood. She holds a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design (Painting + Ceramics) MFA in Criticism and Curatorial Practices from OCAD University and a PhD in Social and Political Thought from York University. Recent artistic projects include: to notice, a 150’ installation of light and shadow for Nuit Blanche Etobicoke, and an audio-visual commission by imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival called Where they begin I continue. Her solo exhibition What does good work look like? opened at Gallery 44 (Toronto) in 2022 and travelled to C’CAP (Winnipeg) in 2023. In 2025 she will open two solo exhibitions: One at ASpace Gallery, and another at the Durham Art Gallery. Recent curatorial projects include: How can I know you? a group show about the agency of land-based material at the Art Gallery of Burlington, and Otakosik Tapwa’win, an interactive online oral history project with Indigenous artists in Winnipeg from the 70s, 80s, and 90s. She has published with cmagazine. Her forthcoming book But have we arrived? explores the liberalism’s failed promises to Indigenous artists, and is contracted to ARP Books with a planned for release in late 2025. Suzanne, alongside her collaborator Jaimie Isaac, runs ROSEMARY Gallery, a roving gallery — born on the prairies out of the needs and aspirations of artists for the promotion of arts-based projects that grow from the families and communities with whom artists and arts workers are in relation. It emerges from the belief that art is rooted in our relationships to others in our neighbourhoods, communities, and cities, and that galleries are responsible to the needs of those geographies. ROSEMARY operates with a mandate to responsively engage in and care for Indigenous and BPOC communities through critical arts-based projects including exhibitions, performances, public discussions, community feasts, and celebrations. Morrissette’s father’s parents were Michif- and Cree-speaking Metis with family histories tied to the Interlake and Red River regions and Scrip in the area now known as Manitoba. Her mother’s parents came from Canadian-born farming families descended from United Empire loyalists and Mennonites from Russia. Morrissette was born and raised in Winnipeg and is a citizen of the Manitoba Metis Federation. ### Education #### Doctor of Philosophy **Type:** Social and Political Thought York University #### Masters of Fine Art **Type:** Criticism and Curatorial Practice OCAD University #### Bachelor of Fine Art **Type:** General Visual Arts Emily Carr University of Art and Design **Type:** Faculty of Fine Art University of Manitoba ### Employment #### Interim Chair, Indigenous Visual Culture **Type:** Faculty of Arts and Science OCAD U #### Associate Professor **Type:** Faculty of Arts and Science Ontario College of Art and Design #### Assistant Professor **Type:** Faculty of Arts and Science Ontario College of Art and Design #### Graduate Program Director, Contemporary Art, Design and New Media Art History + Criticism and Curatorial Practices **Type:** School of Graduate Studies OCAD U #### Assistant Professor **Type:** Department of Visual Art Brock University #### Assistant Professor **Type:** School of Critical and Creative Studies Alberta College of Art + Design #### Lecturer **Type:** Faculty of Liberal Arts and Science OCAD University #### Community Outreach Coordinator Urban Shaman Contemporary Aboriginal Art #### Instructor **Type:** Faculty of Fine Art Lakehead University ### Funding #### Indigenous Art Histories: Winnipeg **Type:** Grant An Interactive Platform for Indigenous Art Histories: Winnipeg 1970-1996 is a curatorial project to document and disseminate stories related to the history of Indigenous art in Winnipeg from 1970 – 1996. The time period that we have selected for this project will address a specific gap in recorded history. We begin in the early 1970s, for example, when the late Daphne Odjig opened a gallery at 331 Donald Street and later co-founded Professional Indian Artists Inc., which has been the subject of recent study and curation by curators such as Cathy Mattes and Michelle Lavallee. Beginning in the 70s however, there is important information about Indigenous theatre, music, and visual art which took place in Winnipeg and that was formative for Indigenous arts and that has not been recognized through formal study. We conclude our timeframe in 1996 with the opening of Urban Shaman Gallery. Although this gallery’s programming records are incomplete, there is a decent amount of information on the work of Indigenous artists in Winnipeg after 1996. #### an incomplete map, cont. **Type:** Grant #### location knowledge **Type:** Grant #### Social Histories/Indigenous Art **Type:** Grant #### Inclusion/Exclusion Project + Archive **Type:** Grant A project to comprehensively map the changing contexts of inclusion facing Indigenous artists and arts professionals in the Canadian arts sector. #### Tawayik Gallery: Research-Creation for Centreing Indigenous Thought **Type:** Grant Tawayik Gallery responds to the contexts of inclusionary histories in Canada through the activation of an experimental exhibition space, an engagement with artists in residence, film screenings, and a framework for collaborative exchange with institutional partners. #### Kiiwatin Oskapiywis Studio **Type:** Grant A grant to provide research employment opportunities for students across all faculties. This grant was awarded in support of an undergraduate student Research Assistant position with Kiiwatin Oskapiywis Studio. #### Other Centres Curatorial Lab **Type:** Grant A curatorial lab investigating representational models that are situated in relation to institutions in ways that challenge current models of inclusion towards greater equity and agency for BIPOC artists and arts professionals. I have received seed funding in the amount of $3000 to begin developing this project with research partners. #### relationships, reciprocity, exchange **Type:** Grant A creative research project on the subject of ongoing states of coloniality resulting in the creation of major artworks by PI Dr. Suzanne Morrissette and Co-Applicants Dr. Alia Weston and Professor Lisa Myers in addition to support for student artworks, the curation of exhibitions, and cultivation of research communities through collaboration and care. #### Imagining Inclusion: Artists and Arts Workers on EDI in Practice **Type:** Grant An artist- and arts-worker-led collaboration with six artist run centres as partner organizations to examine current trends in EDI practices in the arts while charting future pathways for equitable frameworks. With Co-Director Professor Immony Men. #### Stories of Place, Location and Knowledge **Type:** Grant A year-long award to support the completion of my masters research through SSHRC’s Joseph Armand Bombardier Masters Award. #### Of this land, on this land: Indigenous Artists Challenging the racial logics of liberal modernity **Type:** Grant A three year award to support the completion of my doctoral research through SSHRC’s Joseph Armand Bombardier Doctoral Award, Category A. #### Indigenous ceramic practice **Type:** Grant Support for a research project about Indigenous ceramic practices with artists KC Adams, Anong Beam, and Franchesca Hebert Spence. #### translations at daphne art centre **Type:** Grant Support for development of exhibition at daphne art centre in 2022. #### personal political philosophy **Type:** Grant Project funding for a series of drawings through the Creating, Knowing, and Sharing Program.