Alexandra Nahwegahbow
Lecturer
| Degrees: | BA (Guelph), MA (Carleton), PhD (Carleton, expected 2025) |
| Email: | alexandranahwegahbow@cunet.carleton.ca |
Alexandra Kahsenni:io Nahwegahbow (she/her) is Anishinaabe and Kanien’kehá:ka, and a member of Whitefish River First Nation with maternal roots in Kahnawà:ke Mohawk Territory. Born and raised in Ottawa, Ontario, Nahwegahbow recently held the position of Associate Curator of Historical Indigenous Art at the National Gallery of Canada from 2018-2024. She has experience working with historical belongings in museums and galleries internationally, and has worked with contemporary Indigenous artists on a range of creative and curatorial projects. She has a great love of stories and for the handmade. She specializes in visual and material culture from her traditional territories in the Great Lakes region and her doctoral research focuses on material histories of Indigenous childcare and the roles of children and young people in Indigenous communities. Her methodology and practice centre around care, visiting, relationality, and customary arts.
She has received training in the care and curation of Indigenous art and ancestral belongings under the guidance of her mentors and community members, and through work with the Great Lakes Research Alliance for the Study of Aboriginal Art and Culture (GRASAC), the Royal Ontario Museum, participation in the Otsego Institute for Native American Art History in Cooperstown, NY, and through a Fellowship held at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA.
Her select curatorial and co-curatorial projects include, Histórias indígenas [Indigenous Histories], an internationally touring exhibition organized by Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, in Brazil, in collaboration with the Kode-Bergen Art Museum, in Norway; Always Vessels at the Carleton University Art Gallery; and Temporal Re-Imaginings at Âjagemô for Canada Council for the Arts. At the National Gallery of Canada, she collaborated on several curatorial projects, including the exhibition, Movement: Expressive Bodies in Art, numerous installations in the permanent collection galleries, and several contemporary Indigenous artist commissions.
Her written work has been included in the National Gallery of Canada Review; RACAR: revue d’art canadienne / Canadian Art Review; Inuit Art Quarterly; The National Gallery of Canada Magazine; the edited volume, Community of Images: Strategies of Appropriation in Canadian Art, 1977-1990; as well as exhibition catalogues for Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and Karsh-Masson Gallery.
Nahwegahbow currently serves on the Board of Directors for the artist-run-centre, Gallery 101; the Board of Directors for the Native American Arts Studies Association (NAASA); and is on the Indigenous Advisory Council for the Terra Foundation for American Art in Chicago, IL.
She is also part of the Ottawa-based Indigenous artist and curatorial collective, Wolf Babe. They have had work exhibited and acquired by the City of Ottawa Art Collection, been commissioned to create a permanent installation by the University of Guelph, and are currently co-conspiring on several upcoming projects.
Nahwegahbow is cross-appointed with Carleton University’s Curatorial Studies program at the Institute of Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Culture (ICSLAC).