Heather Igloliorte

Igloliorte is Co-Director of the Initiative for Indigenous Futures (IIF) Cluster at the Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology at Concordia University and is a special advisor to the university's provost on advancing Indigenous knowledges. She will be a Scholar in Residence at the University of Winnipeg in Summer 2020.

In 2019, she co-founded the GLAM Collective (short for Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums), which explores new methods to exhibit Indigenous art to the Canadian public.

Her most current curatorial projects include "Among All These Tundras" (2018), a contemporary circumpolar art exhibition at Galerie Leonard & Bina Ellen at Concordia University and "Alootook Ipellie: Walking Both Sides of an Invisible Border" (2018), a retrospective exhibit held at the Carleton University Art Gallery. In 2018, Igloliorte was also appointed curatorial lead for inaugural exhibitions at the Inuit Art Centre, scheduled to open in 2020, at the Winnipeg Art Gallery.

In 2018, her article Curating Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit: Inuit Knowledge in the Qallunaat Art Museum (2017) was recognized with an Art Journal Award by the College Art Association.

She is an Associate Professor of Indigenous art history at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, where she holds the University Research Chair in Indigenous Circumpolar Arts. Previously, she was the Indigenous Art History and Community Engagement research chair at the university from 2016 to 2019.

Her more recent curatorial projects include the "Land and Lifeways: Inuit Rights in the North" (2014) exhibit at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights; the first, nationally touring exhibition of Labrador Inuit art entitled "SakKijâjuk: Art and Craft from Nunatsiavut" (2016) which debuted at The Rooms; and "Ilippunga: The Brousseau Inuit Art Collection" (2016), a permanent exhibition at the Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec. She also co-curated "iNuit blanche" (2016), the world’s first all-circumpolar, one-night-only international arts festival held in St. John's, Newfoundland. SakKijâjuk: Art and Craft from Nunatsiavut, which will tour until 2020, received an Outstanding Achievement Award from the Canadian Museums Association in 2017.

Her other publications include chapters and catalogue essays in Negotiations in a Vacant Lot: Studying the Visual in Canada (2014); Manifestations: New Native Art Criticism (2012); Changing Hands: Art Without Reservation 3 (2012); Curating Difficult Knowledge (2011); Native American Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Museum of Art (2011); Inuit Modern (2010); and Response, Responsibility, and Renewal: Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Journey (2009).

Igloliorte has edited catalogues for her respective Decolonize Me (2011), SakKijâjuk: Art and Craft from Nunatsiavut (2017) and Ilippunga: The Brousseau Inuit Art Collection (2016) exhibitions.

Igloliorte's earlier curatorial projects included: the online collaborative exhibition "Inuit Art Alive" (2008), sponsored by the Inuit Art Foundation; "Decolonize Me" (2011), which debuted at the Ottawa Art Gallery and toured throughout Canada; and the nationally touring "We Were So Far Away: The Inuit Experience of Residential Schools" (2012), a Legacy of Hope Foundation project based on the oral histories of eight Inuit former students of the residential school system.

Igloliorte obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts from NSCAD University in 2003. She completed a Master of Arts in Canadian Art History at Carleton University in 2007 and obtained a Ph.D. in Cultural Mediations at Carleton University's Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Culture (ICSLAC) in 2013.

Igloliorte was born in Happy Valley-Goose Bay in 1979. James Igloliorte, her father, served as a Judge with the Provincial Court of Newfoundland and Labrador, making him Labrador’s first Inuk judge and one of the few practicing Indigenous magistrates in all of Canada.