Haema Sivanesan, Ivetta Sunyoung Kang, and Paola Poletto will critically consider the opportunity offered by artist residency programs from different perspectives—both inside and outside the institution. In this conversation, the panelists offer an entry point into thinking about artist residencies through questions that arise in the context of facilitating or participating in residency programs.  

Ivetta Sunyoung Kang (b. South Korea) is a conceptual artist, independent researcher, and poet who works across Canada, Germany, and South Korea. She is interested in poetics, paradox, and absurdity in post-colonial debris and transnational ethnographic studies. She has presented internationally, including Nuit Blanche Toronto, the Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and Centre Clark. Kang has participated in AiR programs at the Art Gallery of Ontario, ZK/U, SomoS Art House, and DAÏMÔN. Her research-based and collaborative practice evolves through intuitive dialogues between projects involving poetics, text, video installation, site-responsive performance, and audience participation. In her practice, artist residencies are where poetics of the private and critical discourses and politics of the public congregate with one another. 

Haema Sivanesan is Director, Leighton Studios and Program Partnerships at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. She has held leadership and curatorial positions in public art galleries, artist-run centres, and festivals around the world. Her curatorial work typically focuses on non-western art histories and practices. She has been the recipient of prestigious awards from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, New York and the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation, Hong Kong. In her current role, she is thinking about artist residencies as simultaneously a form of retreat, as temporary communities, and as a learning environment. 

Since 2013, Paola Poletto has welcomed artists into museum residency through the AGO x RBC Emerging Artists Program. Paola is the Director of Engagement & Learning at the Art Gallery of Ontario, where she oversees opportunities to connect people with art. Drawing on more than 25 years of experience in the museums and civic engagement fields, her practice-led research is focused on transformational museum experiences, with expertise in artist residencies, and a social practice that intersects artistic, curatorial, and pedagogical methods.   

This event is preceded by an online workshop series with Francisco Guevara

Sivanesan and Kang will also be presenting as part of a larger panel discussion moderated by Poletto at the University Art Association Conference taking place in London, Ontario October 24–26. The panel, entitled Artist in Residence: re-imaging dwelling and movement, also includes artist Marla Hlady, curator Janine Marschessault, scholar Ashley Scarlett.