La Tanya S. Autry is an art historian, educator, curator, and writer who believes in making cultural work liberatory praxis. She co-produced the global movement #MuseumsAreNotNeutral and has created exhibitions and programming via institutions and independent projects.

Toronto-based curator and creative director, Ingrid Jones examines the intersections of decolonial curatorial practice, transnational solidarities, and the politics of museum representation. Her research engages themes of marginalization and refusal through installation, media, and collaborative projects. Recent initiatives address liberatory practices of the African diaspora (Liberation in Four Movements, 2024), the unseen labour of BIPOC artists and cultural workers (Labour, 2024-25), and nostalgia for racialized communities framed through white supremacy (Nostalgia Interrupted, 2022).

Lise Ragbir is the CEO and Co-Founder of VERGE—a talent and recruiting agency dedicated to supporting an evolving workforce, and equipping galleries, museums, and cultural institutions, with the resources to ensure that talent is not only recruited, but retained. She is the co-editor of Collecting Black Studies: The Art of Material Culture (2020), and her essays about race, identity, immigration, and cultural representation have appeared in Hyperallergic, ESSENCE, Salon, Frieze, Artnet, The Guardian, Time Magazine, USA Today, The Boston Globe and other publications. She earned a BFA at Concordia University and is a graduate of Harvard University’s Museum Studies Program.

Drawing from Tricia Hersey’s book Rest as Resistance: A Manifesto, this conversation will explore the meaning and function of rest for Indigenous and Black folks. We will reflect on how rest challenges systems that prioritize productivity in service of capitalism over well-being and consider its role in reclaiming time, space, and dignity.

Together, we will ask: can rest become a collective strategy for healing and liberation? How do cultural traditions and ancestral practices inform our understanding of rest today? This conversation will invite participants to share stories, insights, and practices that honor rest as a radical act of care and resistance.

BIO

Kat Charles (she/they) is a queer Haitian artist, mental health counsellor, creative arts therapist, somatic practitioner, dance movement therapist in training and community organizer based in Tio’tia:ke (Montreal).

Their facilitation is heavily rooted in a commitment to collective liberation. They exercise this by fostering safer spaces for marginalized folks to experience re-indigenized therapeutic spaces individually and in community through embodiment and sacred creativity. In their practice Kat enjoys emphasizing imaginative playfulness as a form of embodied emancipation, joy and resistance, using techniques such as role play, storytelling, improv, somatic awareness and creative movement.

Katsitsanoron (Kat) Dumoulin-Bush (they/them) is Onkwehonwe/French Canadian from Oshahrhè:’on (Châteauguay), Quebec. They received their BA in Linguistics from Concordia University in 2017. Kat has taught mathematics, science, music, special education, and kindergarten in Indigenous communities across Quebec. A “non-disciplinary” artist and curator, Katsitsanoron uses experiential learning to make work and exhibitions that pose and respond to questions about sexual, racial, and interpersonal identity. They completed residencies at Artexte (2023), daphne art centre (2023), and The Banff Centre (2024). Recently, their work has revolved around the cultural mediation of Indigenous art exhibitions at the MACM, MOMENTA, and at the MBAM as the Indigenous art and design intern. Kat is currently a guest curator for the inaugural exhibition at the new MACM at Place des Arts and sits on the boards of CACPA (Collectif pour les arts et les cultures des Peuples autochtones) and MOMENTA.

Prakash Krishnan (he/him) is an artist-researcher and cultural worker exploring questions around accessibility, contemporary art, and education. He is the Public Programs and Education Coordinator at the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery and previously worked in art education at PHI and at Centre CLARK. He holds an MA in Media Studies and a Graduate Diploma in Communication Studies, both from Concordia University. He has published widely on feminist archives, contemporary art, and 2SLBGTQ+ organizing in the form of articles, essays, book chapters, reviews, interviews, and zines. His writing appears in PUBLIC, Plot(s) Journal of Design Studies, Canadian Journal of Communication, Design and Political Dissent: Spaces Visuals Materiality, and Cigale among others.

rosalind hampton is an activist scholar who works as an associate professor of black studies at the University of Toronto. Their areas of teaching and research include black radical thought, arts and creative practice, black studies in higher education, student activism, and community-based and popular education. hampton is the author of Black Racialization and Resistance at an Elite University (UTP, 2020) and is currently completing her second single-authored book project, titled Critical-Creative Praxis in Black Studies.