Jaclyn Quaresma is a curator.
Taking the form of film programs, exhibitions, talks, collaborative publishing, festivals, reading rooms, and more, her work opens up space for porous, leaky transdisciplinary conversations and possibilities. Her curatorial curiosity is one of transmutation: how might we move through this contemporary moment and into the next?
Jaclyn is currently the Programming Director at Images Festival, a historic Toronto-based organization dedicated to presenting experimental moving image culture at its many intersections. In her role, she has developed and formalized the festival’s Curator-in-Residence program, connecting Toronto-based curators to global experimental moving image practices. She previously served as Executive Director and Curator of Durham Art Gallery, where she founded the Rural Reading Riot Press and accompanying festival, grounded in rural futurity, radical care, and collectivity. From 2019 to 2021, Jaclyn was the Curator-in-Residence at the University of Guelph’s Ontario Agricultural College, where she worked with international artists on themes of art, agriculture, and sustainability through the lens of Octavia E. Butler’s Earthseed series.
She holds a Master’s of Visual Studies in Curatorial Practice from the Daniels School of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto, and a Graduate Certificate from Humber College’s esteemed Creative Writing program with a focus on Playwriting.
As an undergraduate, Jaclyn received an Honours Bachelor’s of Art, Specialist in Art and Art History, from the University of Toronto, Mississauga, as well as an Animation, Arts & Design Advanced Diploma from Sheridan College. While a student, she initiated The Booth, a student-led exhibition space still in operation at Sheridan’s Trafalgar Campus, and was one of three artists who co-founded 47, a now sunsetted project space in Parkdale, Toronto.
Jaclyn has also collaborated with numerous institutions, including e-flux (New York, USA), VTape, Art Museum at the University of Toronto, DMG at University of Toronto Scarborough, Gallery TPW, Nuit Blanche, Toronto International Film Festival (Toronto, Canada), and Crate Studio Project Space (Margate, England), among many others. Across almost two decades of curatorial work, she has platformed the practices of more than 200 artists.
Jaclyn spends her time building and upholding spaces, programs, and platforms for experimental practices, collaborating with folks who consider the ongoing impacts of the world we currently inhabit. Right now, as you read this, she is probably (most likely) speaking to a filmmaker about what’s at the core of their practice, or working on a strange little screenplay to accompany her wee wonky play.
