WESTERN FRONT – Talk by Suzy Halajian

Join us for a talk by curator Suzy Halajian, whose practice considers curating as an interdisciplinary form of research shaped by time, relationships, and sustained attention. Through her work as the Executive Director & Chief Curator of JOAN, an artist-centred nonprofit space in Los Angeles, Halajian brings exhibitions into dialogue with film, performance, publishing, and discursive programs, exploring how ideas can develop, shift, and accumulate across different forms and extended lines of inquiry.

Her collaboration with Saodat Ismailova offers one such example, extending from Other Time and the Davra Research Collective, presented at JOAN in 2024, to Other Light, currently on view at Western Front. Across these projects, Halajian considers how exhibitions can be guided by inquiry, access, and relational forms of knowledge rather than spectacle or institutional scale.

The talk will also consider A Grammar Built with Rocks, an independently organized curatorial and publishing project that traces racialized and gendered relationships between bodies and land. Bringing together artistic research, publishing, and collective inquiry, the project considers how cultural practices might respond to histories of dispossession and ongoing socioecological crisis while imagining alternative ways of being together in place.

Moving across these projects, Halajian will reflect on the possibilities and challenges of building responsive, artist-centred structures that sustain experimentation, collaboration, and critical exchange over time.

Black-and-white portrait of Suzy Halajian, a woman with dark curly hair worn loose over her shoulders and gathered at the top, looking directly at the camera with a neutral expression. She wears a dark, high-necked top and small stud earrings, photographed against a plain light-gray background.

About the Speaker

Suzy Halajian is a curator and writer based in Los Angeles, where she serves as the executive director and curator at JOAN. Her practice is invested in long-term collaborations with artists, and examines the intersections of art, politics, and social histories, with a particular focus on image-making, colonial histories, and contemporary surveillance. She has curated exhibitions and public programs at institutions including the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), ONE Archives at the USC Libraries, Kunstverein Amsterdam, UKS (Oslo), Galerie Hubert Winter (Vienna), and the Sursock Museum (Beirut). Halajian’s writing has appeared in BOMB, X-TRA, ArteEast, Ibraaz, and other publications. She holds an MA from Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies and is currently a PhD candidate in film and digital media at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Accessibility

The Reliance Theatre is located on the 1st floor of Emily Carr University of Art + Design. The building is best accessed from the southwest entrance, which faces Great Northern Way. The nearest address is 555 Great Northern Way. The entrance is an outward-swinging double door with hand-height buttons for automated opening. This entrance gives access to the building’s 2nd floor. The elevators are located down the hall to the right, approximately 80 steps from the entrance.

Gender neutral washrooms are located on both the 1st and 2nd floors.

Acknowledgement

Presented in partnership with Emily Carr University of Art + Design and Fillip, with support from the Audain Foundation.

Portrait of Suzy Halajian.

Portrait of Suzy Halajian.

Western Front is a non-profit artist-run centre in Vancouver.

We acknowledge the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations as traditional owners of the land upon which Western Front stands.