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Dr. Julie Nagam is a Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Arts, Collaboration and Digital Media and the Director of Aabijijiwan New Media Lab

Dr. Julie Nagam (Métis/German/Syrian) is an Associate Professor in the department of Art History at the University of Winnipeg. She is the inaugural Artistic Director for 2020 and 2022 for Nuit Blanche Toronto, the largest public exhibition in North America. In 2020 she shifted to the first virtual exhibition with an online archive with over 1400 projects (Nuit History), over 20 AR and VR artworks (Nuit In Your Neighbourhood), and live stream over 30 artists for (Nuit Live) plus talks and podcasts. Dr. Nagam's SSHRC research includes digital makerspaces + incubators, mentorship, digital media + design, international collaborations and place-based knowledge.

Dr. Nagam is currently the Principal Director of the multi-million dollar Partnership and Development Grant The Space Between Us: Co(lab)orations within Indigenous, Circumpolar and Pacific Places Through Digital Media and Design (2021–2028). She is a collective member of GLAM, which works on curatorial activism, Indigenous methodologies, public art, digital technologies, and engagement with place. As a scholar and artist she is interested in revealing the ontology of land, which contains memory, knowledge and living histories. Dr. Nagam hosted and organized “The Future is Indigenous” (http://abtec.org/iif/symposia/3rd-annual-symposium/) and the International Indigenous curators exchange with Australia, Canada, Aotearoa (NZ) and Finland. She is co-editor of Becoming Our Future: Global Indigenous Curatorial Practice and Indigenous Art: New Media and the Digital, a special issue 54 of PUBLIC journal.

Her artistic work has been exhibited internationally, including in Brazil, France, New Zealand, and England, which includes solo and group exhibitions. Nagam was commissioned to create Manitowapow, speaking to the moon for Nuit Blanche in Toronto (2017) and a digital installation the future is in the land if you listen to it, for the Smithsonian's exhibition Transformer in New York (2017-18). Dr. Nagam has had solo exhibitions the future is in the land (2018) at Aspace Gallery (CAN) 2019, her solo exhibition locating the little heartbeats was shown at Gallery 1C03 in Winnipeg and travelled to New Zealand. Her work our future is in the land: if we listen to it was exhibited in the 2017 group show Transformers at the Smithsonian Museum in New York and a commissioned work Manitobwabow: Speaking to the Moon for Nuit Blanche, Toronto, ON. Currently she is working on two new commissioned artworks for Urban Shaman, The Dowse and London Musuem for 2021/22.

Dr. Nagam is currently the Director of the Aabijijiwan New Media Lab and the Co-Director of the Kishaadigeh Collaborative Research Centre. The centre and lab boast over 4000 square feet that houses four digital media labs each with a specific production focus – sound, projection, virtual reality (VR), animation and video – and a collaborative interactive studio space for engagement between these mediums, as well as a collaborative space for workshops, intergenerational gatherings, dialogues, and work with older media, such as sewing, embroidery, caribou hide tufting, beading, and other materials. She was the Concordia University and Massey University (NZ) Scholar in Residence for 2018/19, and will be the Terra Foundation Visiting Scholar at the University of Sydney (AUS) for 2021-22.