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Ryan Rice wins Changemaker I-BPOC Award

Ana Serrano GOG credit

Photo credit: Ana Serrano

Ryan Rice, Onsite Gallery’s Executive Director and Curator, Indigenous Art, is the recipient of the 2022 Changemaker I-BPOC Award from the Galeries Ontario / Ontario Galleries (GOG) Awards.

As the only annual juried awards of its kind, the iconic GOG Awards, which took place on November 28,  celebrate the outstanding achievement, artistic merit and excellence of arts institutions and professionals in the public art gallery sector.

The Changemaker I-BPOC Award recognizes arts leaders, who identify as Black, Indigenous and People of Colour, for their distinctive and outstanding contributions to the I-BPOC communities and public art gallery sector of Ontario.

“On behalf of the OCAD University community, I offer our collective congratulations to Ryan for winning this prestigious and well-deserved honour,” says OCAD U President and Vice-Chancellor Ana Serrano. “As Onsite’s Executive Director, we are very excited about the future possibilities and his continued role as a changemaker.”

Onsite Gallery’s exhibition, Fable for Tomorrow: a Survey of Works by Wendy Coburnco-curated by writer, curator and Vice-President and Provost Caroline Seck Langill and Associate Professor and independent curator Andrea Fatona, was shortlisted in the category of Exhibition of the Year Budget over $20,000 Monographic.

About Ryan Rice

Ryan Rice Onsite Gallery Launch Sept 2017Ryan Rice, Kanien’kehá:ka of Kahnawake, is the Executive Director and Curator, Indigenous Art, at OCAD U’s Onsite Gallery, and is one of Canada’s leading Indigenous curators of contemporary art.

For the last 30 years, Rice has worked in the field of art, culture and education in a number of capacities. As a professional curator dedicated to the presentation of contemporary Indigenous art and criticism, he has made significant contributions in the arts and culture sector locally, nationally and collaboratively, and to enhancing the capacity for Indigenous visual culture and curatorial practice to be recognized and flourish.

He has contributed to the development of two significant collections in the capacity of Chief Curator—the federal Indigenous Art Centre’s National Collection (1997-2002) and the Institute of American Indian Arts Museum of Contemporary Native Arts collection (2009-2014).

In the fall of 2014, Rice joined OCAD U as a tenure-track associate professor and was named Delaney Chair, Indigenous Visual Culture, where he administered the interdisciplinary BFA degree program for four years while directing the Indigenous Visual Culture Student Centre.

In 2019, he became Associate Dean, Academic Affairs in the Faculty of Arts and Science, where he continued to foster a platform ensuring the commitment to Indigenous engagement is activated at the University.

He successfully presented the exhibitions raise a flag: Works from the Indigenous Art Collection (2000-2015) at Onsite Gallery, which won a GOG award; You’re Welcome at A Space; Listen to the Land for Nuit Blanche 2019; and toured the solo exhibition BAIT: Couzyn van Heuvelen nationally from 2019 -2021. All of these exhibitions advanced the discourse and public presentation of contemporary Indigenous visual art and cultures.  

As Curator, Indigenous Art at the Onsite Gallery since July 2021, Rice curated the solo exhibition Jordan Bennett: Souvenir, which opened in June 2022. He also curated two additional solo exhibitions in 2022: Natalie King: Pageant at Centre[3] in Hamilton and January Rogers: Versification at Daphne Art Centre in Montreal.

He also created a partnership with the Inuit Art Foundation for a new series of commissioned public art murals over two years. Titled Up Front: Inuit Public Art at Onsite Gallery, this initiative was launched in April 2022 with a mural by Kablusiak. The second, by Kyle Natkusiak Aleekuk, was installed in October and will be on view until March 2023.

Rice, who became Onsite Gallery’s Executive Director in September 2022, has demonstrated outstanding service to the community through his leadership as co-founder and former director of the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective (now Indigenous Curatorial Collective) and as a member of the Inuit Art Foundation Board of Directors. He also plays an advisory role on the University of Waterloo’s Longhouse Labs, a Canada Research Centre project.