2022 Selection Committee
Emily Falencki, Artist and Educator
Emily Falencki is an artist who lives and works in North End Halifax and Cape Breton Island. She is the founder and director of 2482 Maynard and The Blue Building Gallery. Raised in New York City, Falencki completed her BFA at NSCAD University and her MFA at the National College of Art in Dublin, Ireland. Grounding her work with a profound commitment to personal narratives and how these relate to a shared experience, Falencki’s artistic practice led her to create a new kind of art space in Halifax. With 2482 Maynard and The Blue Building Gallery, Falencki has provided affordable, fully-accessible artist studios; long-term space for artist-run non-profits; and leads a dynamic exhibition programme with international, national and regional artists.
Sequoia Miller, Chief Curator, Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art
Sequoia Miller is a curator, historian, and studio potter. Miller holds a PhD in the History of Art from Yale University; an MA from the Bard Graduate Center for Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture; and a BA in Cultural Studies from Brandeis University. Recent curatorial projects include Shary Boyle: Outside the Palace of Me (national tour) and Ai Weiwei: Unbroken at the Gardiner, as well as The Ceramic Presence in Modern Art at the Yale University Art Gallery. Miller has lectured widely and taught at Yale University, the Rhode Island School of Design, and University of Toronto. Before pursuing historical and curatorial projects, Miller was a full-time studio potter based in the Pacific Northwest.
Michelle Jacques, Head of Exhibitions and Collections / Chief Curator, Remai Modern
Michelle Jacques is a curator, writer, educator, and cultural worker. She is currently the Head of Exhibitions and Collections/Chief Curator at Remai Modern. Prior to moving to the Prairies, she was the Chief Curator at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria in British Columbia for eight years; before that, she held curatorial positions in the contemporary and Canadian departments at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. While her long-term commitment is to growing the relevance of visual art museums, she has also worked as the Director of Programming at the Centre for Art Tapes, an artist-run centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and taught writing, art history and curatorial studies at NSCAD University, the University of Toronto Mississauga, and OCAD University.
Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre, Curator of Contemporary Art, Musée d’art de Joliette
Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre has been the Curator of Contemporary Art of the Musée d’art de Joliette since 2017. Before joining the Museum’s team she worked at the Darling Foundry, the SBC Contemporary Art Gallery and the photography magazine Ciel Variable, in addition to developing projects as an independent curator. At the Musée d’art de Joliette she has curated exhibitions with Kapwani Kiwanga (2018–2019), Shannon Bool (2018–2020), Jin-me Yoon (2019–2021), Leisure (2019), Monique Régimbald-Zeiber (2020–2021) and Chloë Lum and Yannick Desranleau (2020). St-Jean Aubre has published articles in several Quebec magazines, including ESSE, ESPACE, INTER and JEU. Her interests focus on the themes of identity and cultural issues explored by contemporary artistic practices and recent essays have featured Shannon Bool (A Question of Viewpoints and Perspectives, 2019, in the catalog Bombshell ), Monique Régimbald-Zeiber (la commissaire, 2020, in the catalog Les ouvrages et les heures… et les restes) and Sophie Jodoin (Room(s) to move: je, tu, elle, 2021). She studied Visual Arts and French Literature at the University of Ottawa before completing a Master’s degree in Art History at the Université du Québec à Montréal.