Sylvie Fortin is an interdependent curator, researcher, writer, and editor based between Montréal, New York, and Buenos Aires.
She was Curator-in-Residence at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, USA (2019–21); Executive/Artistic Director of La Biennale de Montréal (2013–17); Executive Director/Editor of ART PAPERS, Atlanta (2004–12); Curator of Contemporary Art at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Canada (2013); and Curator of Manif d’art 5, Québec City, Canada (2010). Fortin was the Founding Editor of PASS: Journal of the International Biennial Association (2017– 21). She lectures internationally and her critical essays and reviews have been published in numerous catalogues, anthologies, and periodicals, including Artforum International, ART PAPERS, Art Press, C Magazine, E-flux, Flash Art, and Frieze.
In 2017, Fortin began a long-term, interdisciplinary, and itinerant curatorial inquiry into the currencies of hospitality, developed through curatorial research residencies hosted by diverse institutions including the Emily Harvey Foundation (Venice, Italy), URRA Tigre (Buenos Aires, Argentina), 18th Street Art Center (Santa Monica, USA), Felipa Manuela (Madrid), SOMA (Mexico City), Headlands Center for the Arts, (Sausalito, USA), Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb (Croatia), CRVENA/Nona Residency (Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina), Belgrade Artist in Residence/C24 (Belgrade, Serbia, Akrai Residency, (Palazzolo Acreide, Italy), Parse (New Orleans, USA), and the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow.
This hydra-headed durational pursuit has had several public manifestations, including her editorship of PUBLIC (Fall 2020); her collaboration with Richard Ibghy & Marilou Lemmens around the intersections between soil, land use, interspecies cohabitation, financialization, and hospitality through an iterative, name-changing exhibition presented at Bemis Center (Omaha, USA), Ulrich Museum of Art (Wichita, USA), Confederation Centre Art Gallery (Charlottetown, Canada), and Nanaimo Art Gallery (Nanaimo, Canada) (forthcoming, 2026); her production of Liv Schulman’s feature films The New Inflation (2021) and Un círculo que se fue rodando [A Circle that Rolled Away] (2024), which won the Flash competition Prize 2024 at FID Marseille; and the episodic group exhibition I don’t know you like that: The Bodywork of Hospitality, delving into storied entanglements of the body and hospitality, presented at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, (Omaha, USA) and UB Art Galleries (Buffalo, USA).
During her residency at AiR 351, her research will be focused on the intersections of hospitality and economies/economics in contemporary practice.
Thanks to the Canada Council for the Arts for their generous support.