Lauren Barnes

PhD Student (she/her)

Campus

Fields of Study

Areas of Interest

  • Modern and contemporary art in global perspective
  • History and theory of museums and exhibitions
  • Critical curatorial studies
  • Postcolonial/decolonizing approaches to issues of culture and representation

Biography

My doctoral research engages with the politics of decolonization in modern and contemporary art museums. Historically situating contemporary discourses and practices, I consider the shifting valences of notions of culture, identity and representation within the art complex, and how these dynamics inform the ways artists make and situate their work. My ongoing engagement with artistic and curatorial practices motivates and guides my research.

Before coming to the PhD program I worked as a curator of modern and contemporary art in public art museums, including as Assistant Curator at Tate Liverpool, UK (2014–18), Curator at The Hepworth Wakefield, UK (2018) and as Curator of Exhibitions at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto (2019–20). In these roles, I curated solo exhibitions of contemporary artists (including Naeem Mohaiemen, Rashid Johnson, Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, Cécile B. Evans, Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley), collaborated on exhibitions of figures including Maria Lassnig, Leonora Carrington, and Geta Brătescu, and worked on historical group exhibitions and collection displays.

Selected Publications

  • Review of Jagdeep Raina: Beautiful Zameen. Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas 8, 1–2 (2023): 241–245.
  • “Failed and flailing masculinities in Afsan’s Long Day.” In Naeem Mohaiemen: What we found after you left, edited by Gaëtane Verna, 59–65. Toronto: The Power Plant, 2021. Exhibition catalogue.
  • “Too close for comfort: Rashid Johnson’s Anxious Audience.” In Rashid Johnson: Anxious Audience, edited by Gaëtane Verna, 79–85. Toronto: The Power Plant, 2020. Exhibition catalogue.
  • Review of Sovereign Words: Indigenous Art, Curation and Criticism, edited by Katya García-Antón. Prefix Photo 42 (Fall/Winter 2020).
  • Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley: We Are Ghosts. Liverpool: Tate Liverpool, 2017. Exhibition catalogue.

Honours, Awards and Grants

  • 2023–26 Joseph Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship (Doctoral), Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
  • 2022–23 Ontario Graduate Scholarship
  • 2021–25 Faculty of Arts and Science Top Doctoral Fellowship (FAST)
  • 2021 Jean Sutherland Boggs Fellowship

 

Education

MA, Courtauld Institute of Art (University of London)
BA (Hons), Courtauld Institute of Art (University of London)

Presentations

“You never know when you’ll need a long stick: ecology and time in the sculptures of Silje Figenschou Thoresen.” Nordic Nature: Art, Ecology, Landscape. Bergen, Norway, June 2022.

Administrative Service

Co-President, Graduate Union of Students of Art (GUStA), 2022–present

Cohort