Water, Kinship, Belief

Candice Hopkins (she/her) serves as Forge Project’s Executive Director and Chief Curator, working with contemporary Indigenous artists to shape one of the preeminent collections of Native art in the country. Candice is a citizen of the Carcross/Tagish First Nation and spent many years in New Mexico, Canada, and Europe before moving to the unceded lands of the Muh-he-con-ne-ok in upstate New York to help build Forge into what it is today. Prior to joining Forge Project, Candice was the Senior Curator for the first two editions of the Toronto Biennial of Art.

Katie Lawson (she/her) is a graduate of the Master of Visual Studies Curatorial program at the University of Toronto, where she previously completed her Master of Arts in Art History. She has held curatorial, education and programming positions at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Doris McCarthy Gallery, Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, bodega (NYC) and University of Toronto. She maintains a practice as an independent curator, editor and writer working within the tradition of eco- and material feminism(s).

Tairone Bastien (he/him) is an independent curator based in Toronto and an Assistant Professor in the Criticism and Curatorial Practice program at the Ontario College of Art and Design University. Tairone co-curated the inaugural Toronto Biennial of Art in 2019 and collaborated on the second edition in 2022. Tairone holds a Master of Art from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York, and a Bachelor’s Degree in Art History with a Minor in Critical Studies in Sexuality from the University of British Columbia.