Getting to know Nawang Tsomo Kinkar
Nawang comes to Winnipeg with a long list of arts-achievements. She is an emerging curator, writer, and researcher of Tibetan descent interested in contemporary art, photography, and Himalayan history and culture. Belonging to the Tibetan exile community, Nawang was born in Kathmandu, Nepal and grew up in the north-east Indian hill town of Kalimpong. She immigrated to Canada during her adolescence years and attended school in Toronto where she completed an undergraduate degree in Art History, English, and Book & Media Studies at the University of Toronto. She also holds a Master of Arts in Photography Preservation & Collections Management from Toronto Metropolitan University. Nawang has completed internships at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection (Venice) and Canadian Centre for Architecture (Montreal). She has also worked in collection-based projects at The Image Centre (Toronto) and the Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto), and recently completed a year-long Curatorial Internship in the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art (New York).
After a whirlwind introduction to the city and a media event introducing Nawang to audiences in Winnipeg, we caught up with our new curator to chat about her goals for this fellowship and her thoughts on art and Winnipeg.
WQ: Tell us a bit about your interests, how you became interested in art and curatorial practices
NK: It took a long time for me to decide I wanted to be a curator. I started in the arts by chance, after seeing a job posting to work in a museum gift shop, which I got. This part-time job inspired me to go to university to study the humanities. Working in a front-of-house and public facing capacity of a museum allowed me to gain a better understanding of how museum spaces function. It allowed me entry into this world, and I wanted to make these spaces more available and accessible to diverse audiences. Basically, I wanted to see more racialized folks coming through the doors. So, I was initially very interested in working in visitor engagement, membership services, and marketing, and I did that throughout my undergraduate years and for a little while after I graduated from UofT.
In retrospect, perhaps I wasn’t yet interested in curatorial or collections work because I didn’t see many people of colour in those positions at the time in Toronto (specifically early to mid-2010s). But I also had very little interest in the kind of art I was learning about at school, and I wasn’t very academic focused at that point—of course, all of this is very connected. I really owe my interest in curating to Toronto’s creative community. Whether artists, writers, other arts workers, or my fellow students—I learned a lot from these relationships, and I look up to a lot of my peers for inspiration and encouragement. They fueled my own thinking of what it means to be engaging in culture, and overtime that became very important to me. So much of what I’ve learned and really my motivation to continue with art is owing to the many incredible artists whose work has influenced how I think about the world. They’ve allowed me to live creatively too, and I am very grateful for this.
WQ: Do you have any favourite curators?
NK: A curator that I admire is Dr. Deepali Dewan at the Royal Ontario Museum. Dr. Dewan has been my long-time supporter. She gave me my first collections internship on a project called the Family Camera Network which I still think about fondly, particularly because this was when I became interested in photography and where I learned about the specialized MA program at TMU which I went on to pursue. Dr. Dewan also mentored me through my MA thesis paper on photography of Tibet and the Himalayas during my collections residency and has supported me through various stages of my career thus far.
Dr. Gaelle Morel, curator at The Image Centre supported my early curatorial career, and it was under her guidance that I was involved in a curatorial project with my MA cohort. This project affirmed my interest in curating exhibitions. I also owe my gratitude to soJin Chun, an arts educator who taught me a lot about arts programming and navigating community-based initiatives.
Oluremi C. Onabanjo, a photo curator at MoMA, is someone I look up to as well. She is doing amazing work, and I was lucky to be in her vicinity during my time there. Candice Hopkins at Forge Project is another curator and cultural leader whose deeply moving work challenging the legacy of museum practice is something I’ve been following for some time.
The Optics of Science: Early Western Stereographs from The Dr. Martin J. Bass and Gail Silverman Bass Collection (installation view), 2022 © Riley Snelling, The Image Centre
The Optics of Science: Early Western Stereographs from The Dr. Martin J. Bass and Gail Silverman Bass Collection (installation view), 2022 © Riley Snelling, The Image Centre
WQ: What have your first few weeks in Winnipeg been like?
NK: Winnipeg has been very welcoming. My new colleagues have shown me a lot of generosity in the short time I’ve been here. I’m very excited to be sharing space and knowledge with all of them. I’ve had the chance to visit local arts spaces such as Urban Shaman Gallery, Aceart, the Centre for Cultural and Artistic Practices, and the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba in Brandon as well and I’m looking forward to engaging with more of the arts community here.
I live near the river. I see it almost every day, it feels very special to be near a large body of water. I saw a deer the other day by the river. I’ve also seen ravens, bunnies, and baby bison (at Fort Whyte Alive)!
At Fort Whyte Alive
Oliva Whetung at C’cap
At Assiniboine Park
At V.J’s Drive Inn
WQ: What is your favourite thing about WAG-Qaumajuq so far?
NK: Qaumajuq! I had seen pictures and tours of the building and collection online and I was still very struck by the beauty of the space when I saw it in person. Curator of Inuit Art, Darlene Wight, gave me a tour of Inuit Sanaugangit last week which I really appreciated. The relationship between the Gallery and the Government of Nunavut is very interesting to me, and I hope to learn more about the activities that emerge from this dynamic.
WQ: What made you want to apply for this curatorial fellowship?
NK: I was interested in coming to Winnipeg because I knew there was a lot of movement concerning Indigeneity across organizations, especially at WAG-Qaumajuq. I had been following the Gallery from afar and the more I learned, the more I was drawn to the fellowship. More significantly, my research interests as well as my identity as an exile-born Tibetan, requires me to constantly think about settler colonialism and Indigeneity in my work. I think about Indigeneity in the Himalayas—the other side of the world—and my own settler position in this country…these similarly executed, ongoing settler colonial projects around the world are intertwined, and I wanted to be in a city where Indigeneity was very visible, and at a cultural institution with people committed to working against this very fundamental issue: the settler colonial nation state.
WQ: Do you have any ideas of what you want to work on while you’re here?
NK: I would love to work on a collections acquisition project. With my background in photography, I am hoping to build the Gallery’s contemporary photography collection with works by lens-based artists that better represent the Canadian reality.
The Gallery’s relationship with Canada’s North is another important aspect that I am drawn to. I am compelled to think about Northern communities globally—such as the many diverse Indigenous communities that call the Himalayas home—and trace the similarities, differences, and parallels between these environments. Even thinking about the cold climate for example—and the visual landscape of snow and ice that make up these vastly different regions—is an idea that I want to spend more time researching. The environments, whether snowy peaks or undulating river systems, are inextricably linked to the socio-political realities of these places, which then go on to contribute to the art and culture that emerges.
WQ: How do you plan to use art as a tool for change?
NK: There is always room for openness. At a micro and personal level, I can’t imagine my identity without art. I’ve been studying and working in the arts for over a decade now, and I continue to learn about critical issues in our society through an interdisciplinary lens because art doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It is a powerful tool for communication that has the potential to connect people across geographic boundaries. I hope to contribute to these possibilities of connectivity and collectivity through my projects at the Gallery.
One thought on "Getting to know Nawang Tsomo Kinkar"
Leave a Reply
More Stories
To plan your visit, check out wag.ca/visit
Thanks for this informative interview.