Curatorial Team

Rose Bouthillier (she/her) joined the Bonavista Biennale as Artistic Director in April 2022. Throughout her career, her focus has been on working closely with artists to develop and present new projects, promoting under-recognized voices and creating thoughtful inter-generational dialogues. Previously, she served as Curator (Exhibitions) at Remai Modern, where she was organizing curator for Postcommodity’s solo exhibition and monograph Time Holds All the Answers, led by Dr. Gerald McMaster and developed through collaboration with Wapatah Centre for Indigenous Visual Knowledge at OCAD University. Her other projects at the museum included solo exhibitions by Sara Cwynar, Zadie Xa, Puppies Puppies (Jade Kuriki Olivo), and Walter Scott, and the presentation of new works by respectfulchild, Jeneen Frei Njootli, Faye HeavyShield and Laurie Kang.

Prior to this, Bouthillier was Associate Curator & Publications Manager at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, where she was especially active in shaping the museum’s local relationships, co-curating a series of biannual exhibitions with artists connected to Cleveland and the surrounding region. She also served as a curatorial correspondent for the inaugural FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial of Contemporary Art (2018). Her writing has been published in monographs on artists including Tony Lewis, Xavier Cha, Kirk Mangus and Michelle Grabner, as well as in magazines and journals including CURA., C Magazine, BlackFlash, Foam Magazine, esse, frieze and Art Criticism & Other Short Stories.

Ryan Rice, Kanien’kehá:ka of Kahnawake, is a curator, critic and creative consultant based in Toronto.  His institutional and independent curatorial career spans 30 years in community, museums, artist run centres, public spaces and galleries. He received a Master of Arts in Curatorial Studies from Bard College; graduated from Concordia University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts and received an Associate of Fine Arts from the Institute of American Indian Arts. Rice focuses his extensive curatorial research and writing on contemporary and Onkwehón:we art. He has been published in numerous periodicals, journals and exhibition catalogues including Rendezvous with the Indigenous Art Collection: how to raise a flag in Curating Lively Objects, (Routledge Press 2021), Bait: Couzyn Van Heuvelen (Artspace 2019) and Taiakoia’tenhatie / Freefall: The Photography of Shelley Niro for Shelley Niro: Scotiabank Award (Steidl/Scotiabank 2018).

In 2022, Rice curated three solo exhibitions including Jordan Bennett: Souvenir at Onsite Gallery, Pageant: Natalie King at Centre [3] and Versification: January Rogers at daphne Art Centre. He is currently developing the 2023 Bonavista Biennale as its co-curator and he was recently appointed to OCAD University’s Onsite Gallery as the Executive Director and Curator, Indigenous Art.

Jenelle Duval (she/her) is an L’nu woman, mother and artist from Seal Rocks, NL who currently lives and works in St. John’s as an Advisor in media and content growth. She has been creating artistic spaces and opportunities for community and arts professionals since the beginning of her career in community in 2012. She was the Artistic Director of Spirit Song Festival, an annual celebration of Indigenous Arts and Culture in St. John’s for nearly a decade. Jenelle is the recipient of YWCA’s Women of Distinction Award (2019) for her work in Arts and Heritage, a founding member of EMCA-winning group Eastern Owl, and a tireless advocate for the preservation and revitalization of cultural arts and music. In 2019 Jenelle was acknowledged with her nomination for Indigenous Song-Writer of the year through the Canadian Folk Music Awards and was awarded the annual Achievement Award from the Atlantic Presenters Association for her contribution to Inidgenous arts presentation in Newfoundland and Labrador in 2020. She is a gifted song-writer and is currently composing a series of works that embody a lands-based narrative through her interactions with territorial attachments and interpersonal relations. Jenelle is rooted in her home territory of Ktaqmkuk, where she shares her life with her amazing daughter Kassidy.

Bushra Junaid (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist-curator based in Toronto whose work probes themes of history, memory, identity and placemaking. Junaid’s project What Carries Us: Newfoundland and Labrador in the Black Atlantic at The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery (2020) included video, mixed media, mural and photo-based works by Canadian and international artists as well as rare archival items, pivoting on Paul Gilroy’s concept of the “Black Atlantic” while also reflecting on John Akomfrah’s Vertigo Sea (2015). In 2016, Junaid co-curated (with Pamela Edmonds) New-Found-Lands: An Art Project Exploring Historical and Contemporary Connections between Newfoundland and the Caribbean Diaspora at Eastern Edge Gallery. Junaid’s work has been recently exhibited as part of Future Possible: The Art of Newfoundland and Labrador to 1949 (The Rooms, 2018); Like Sugar (Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College, 2019); They Forgot That We Were Seeds (Carleton University Art Gallery, 2020); and Here We Are Here: Black Canadian Contemporary Art (Royal Ontario Museum; Montreal Museum of Fine Art; and Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, 2018-2019), among others. Junaid’s artwork is included in The Rooms, Carleton University Art Gallery, Tang Teaching Museum, TD Bank, and Toronto Public Library Osborne Collection of Early Children’s Books collections. Junaid has a Bachelor of Environmental Design Studies and Masters in Architecture from the Technical University of Nova Scotia.

Bethany MacKenzie is an emerging interdisciplinary artist and administrator originally from Logy Bay, now residing in Bonavista, NL. She graduated from Memorial University in 2021 with a BFA in Visual Arts, and in April of 2022 joined Union House Arts as their Programming Director. Her work often attempts to deconstruct and understand the social ideologies we learn through culture within themes of childhood, memory, and identity.

Ossie Michelin is a Labrador Inuk journalist and filmmaker from the community of North West River. From a large family of storytellers, Ossie was always drawn to the ways stories bring people together and teach them about the world and each other.

After graduating from Concordia University’s Journalism program, Ossie worked as a video journalist with APTN National News, where his coverage of Indigenous-led anti-fracking resistance garnered international acclaim. After finishing with APTN Ossie has had a successful freelance career working with national and international news organizations including; the Guardian, National Geographic, the CBC, Vox Media, TVOntario, Canadian Geographic, the Indigenous Peoples Atlas of Canada, and more, including a brief period as an editor-at-large with Canadian Art Magazine. In 2021 he was a judge for the Inuit Art Foundation’s Kenojuak Ashevak Memorial Award and spoke on an international panel hosted by the Inuit Art Foundation and the Smithsonian about Queer Inuit Art. Later that year Ossie launched his first film with the National Film Board of Canada, Evan’s Drum, which toured film festivals around the world. That same year Ossie wrote and directed the award-winning podcast series Telling Our Twisted Histories. Currently, Ossie is working on a number of stories in a variety of mediums.