Political Praxes of Memory:
Diaspora Media Art Archives

3:30 pm - 5:00 pm | Panel

With speakers Gabriela Aceves Sepúlveda, Zaira Zarza, and Sarah Shamash.

Grounded in diverse expertise—Sepúlveda as a media artist and historian, Shamash as a scholar and filmmaker, and Zarza as an art historian and curator—the speakers navigate the nuanced interplay of memory, feminist strategies, and cultural narratives, and delve into Latin American diaspora media art archives. Drawing inspiration from methodologies like the feminist lens, collaborative research-creation, and archival intervention, they venture into probing questions: whose narratives remain untold within the Canadian context, and how can migrant archives fill in those gaps? How do gendered perspectives delineate the contours of media art histories? How can curatorial, archival, and pedagogical practices reshape cultural landscapes? With an unwavering commitment to fostering dialogues on identity, diaspora, and artistic expression, Aceves Sepúlveda, Shamash, and Zarza forge pragmatic strategies that pave a path for critical engagement with Latin American diaspora media art archives, forging connections between past, present, and future narratives.

The conversation will run for approximately 60 minutes, followed by 15 minutes for Q&A.

This event is free and open to the public. Please register in advance.

About the speakers

Gabriela Aceves Sepúlveda (b. Guadalajara, Mexico 1973) is a media artist and cultural historian focusing on feminist media art, research-creation and Latin American art and its diasporas. She is an Associate Professor in the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University (S.I.A.T.), which occupies the unceded territories of the Semiahmoo, Tsawwassen, Kwantlen, Katzie, the Kwikwetlem (kʷikʷəƛ̓əm), and the Qayqayt First Nations. Gabriela is the director of the Critical Media Arts Studio (cMAS), a research-creation studio dedicated to exploring the intersections of technoscience, media arts and history through a feminist lens. She is the author of the award-winning book Women Made Visible: Feminist Art and Media in post-1968 Mexico (Nebraska Press, 2019) translated to Spanish as Las mujeres se hacen visibles: Los feminismos en el arte y los nuevos regímenes mediáticos y la visibilidad en la Ciudad de México, 1971-2011(Bonilla Artigas-CIEG UNAM, 2022). Her research has been published in the Feminist Media Histories Journal, Leonardo Music Journal, and Media-N: the Journal of the New Media Caucus, among others. Her current SSHRC-funded project investigates the role of self-identified women artists, curators and archivists as agents and innovators of arts, science, and technology in the Americas. As a media artist, she produces video installations, sculptures, digital projects, print media, and live performances investigating the body as a site of cultural, gendered and techno-scientific inscriptions. Gabriela is a member of Art/mamas, a Vancouver-based collective of artist mothers and sono(soro)ridades, a group of feminist sound artists, activists, and scholars interested in investigating sound's affective and political dimensions. She is also the Vancouver regional coordinator of T.F.A.P. (the Feminist Art Project) and is a member of the College Arts Association Committee on Women in the Arts. She has previously served as a board member of VIVO MEDIA ARTS and ACCESS art gallery in Vancouver, B.C., and C.A.F.K.A (The Contemporary Art Forum, Kitchener and Area) in Kitchener, Ontario. She was also a member of the REDHEAD Gallery in Toronto and the A.K.A. art collective based in Vancouver.

Sarah Shamash is an Assistant Professor of Critical and Cultural Studies at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Her work as a media artist comprises a wide variety of formats; they have been shown in curated exhibitions and film festivals internationally. She is currently co-curating the exhibition, Diaspora Dialogues – Archiving the Familiar (October-December 2023) at Sur Gallery with Tamara Toledo in Toronto; the exhibition focuses on feminism and Latin American diaspora media artists. Her scholarly research examines Latin American and diaspora film and media cultures with a focus on Brazil. She lives on the unceded and ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil Waututh First Nations in Vancouver.

Zaira Zarza is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History and Film Studies at Université de Montréal. She obtained her Ph.D. in Cultural Studies at Queen’s University and holds a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in Art History from the University of Havana. She was a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Alberta and a Cinema and Media Arts Sessional Assistant Professor at York University. As a programmer, she has worked at the Toronto (TIFF) and Cartagena (FICCI) international film festivals. She also directed the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) Film Festival, Boston, 2019. Zarza founded Roots and Routes (2015-present), a curatorial project that promotes film and media works by Cubans in the diaspora, and published the book Caminos del cine brasileño contemporáneo (Ediciones ICAIC 2010). Her current SSHRC-funded project focuses on Latin American documentary activism. Other research includes Latinx-Canadian cinemas and the economies of Caribbean film.

We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of our funders, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Department of Canadian Heritage.

LAMAS has been generously supported by the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration Program (CERC Migration) and the WhereWeStand Project at Toronto Metropolitan University; the George Brown School of Media and Performing Arts; The Creative School at Toronto Metropolitan University; the Image Centre at Toronto Metropolitan University; Hemispheric Encounters; Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts and Technology, School of the Arts, Media, Performance, and Design at York University; Performance Studies (Canada); OCAD University; Onsite Gallery; the University of Toronto Centre for Culture and Technology; the Latin American Studies Program at the University of Toronto; the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean (CERLAC) at York University; and Lokaal.