Upcoming & recent exhibitions, performances, screenings, projects, publications.
(Updated Dec. 2025)
Tag: Independent Curating (events)
The Polis Project: Astria Suparak on Sports
“I spoke to Suparak about the counter-narratives from artists she’s found through her curation work, the Western fascination for utopian narratives, and how sports and the arts are not mutually exclusive sources of inquiry and criticism of our political and cultural spheres.”
The Game is Not the Thing film & performance series
Spanning pre-cinema to post-internet, this six-part screening & performance series challenges the idea that the worlds of sports and art are mutually exclusive.
Carnegie Museum of Art film series
Suparak is the guest curator for the 2024 Film Series, crafting programs around key ideas present in both the museum collection and her own practice, including science fiction and fantasy, architecture, sports, media criticism, diaspora and inheritance.
EXPANDING THE FIELD: Sports & Politics Discussion Series
Three-part series with journalists, academics, and cultural producers covering topics like athletic protest, concussions and health issues, and labor and exploitation.
A BEAUTIFUL GAME
The film and videomakers amplify fan glee, silliness, and irreverence, and provoke a rival team’s fanbase. These artists celebrate athletes’ rebellious streaks, and admire their disciplined feats of excellence.
Canadian Art feature on INCITE Journal: Sports
“Artists and curators program soccer-related art for gallery spaces—and kick around ideas about politics and power in the process”
POWER FORWARD
The artists in this exhibition draw upon the hidden and political histories of sports to open up analyses of the social world.
THE NATION’S FINEST
A deconstruction of the athlete body – how it is used for national, political, and social agendas, and how it is viewed and re-crafted by artists.
A NON-ZERO-SUM GAME
This year-long series of art exhibitions, film programs, discussions, commissioned projects, and other events took place in galleries, cinemas, sports bars, bookstores, and on rooftops from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C.
Joanie 4 Jackie
The complete archives of the influential underground film network for female filmmakers has been acquired by The Getty and is now viewable online. A selection of videos is available on the Criterion Channel (2020-Present).
QUANTUM LEAPS
This inspirational screening and mini-exhibition catalogues heroes, compresses history, and hallucinates futures.
TROUBLE: Hollywood viewed by the avant-garde cinema
TROUBLE was created to accompany the exhibition, Richard Kerr’s Industry at La Cinematheque quebecoise.
HOW TO BE A CANADIAN
Utilizing artistic (re)enactment, telepathetic aesthetics, manual animation, performance and a grab bag of low-end high technologies, these videos question traditional representations of (Canadian) identity and gender.
ELUSIVE QUALITY
This touring program champions the realities of failure in relation to fantasies of athletic, sexual, and political mastery. Together, the works make for a powerful aesthetic of the undone.
LET’S GET TESTED
Playfully adapting public space into personal games, these makers look at architecture, videogames, biology, schoolwork, history and even their own memories with fresh eyes and twitchy fingers. Often sincere, sometimes willfully naive, they project a new optimism and the ability to self-amuse and re-imagine.
RES profile on Suparak: “Programmed to Stun”
“What she really wanted to do was blow the minds of viewers with unctuous erotica, politically motivated old school avant-garde retorts, hyperbolic tales, and, well, all the great stuff that hardly anybody shows anymore, much less puts together with loving attention to aesthetic nuance and fertile, thematic collision. Noting that part of her project entails seducing viewers to witness unconventional works, she also helps foment a network of artists and like-minded exhibitors.”
The Independent profile on Suparak: “Experimental media curator as rock star”
“At age twenty-four, Astria Suparak has already invented an unstoppable experimental film enterprise. As curator-on-wheels, she is aggressively building sexy niches for visceral and demanding new films and videos by cutting edge artists from around the world, who may seem freaky or misplaced in traditional art or film world contexts.”
ADOLESCENT BOYS, AND LIVING ROOMS
These audios + videos are forcibly lonely and nihilistically sweet. They’ll pin you down and slowly drip spit on you, whether you’re practicing crossovers on a suburban driveway or pile-drivers in a backyard wrestling ring. I’ve got the moves if you’ve got the skills (together we could make a great team).
LOOKING IS BETTER THAN FEELING YOU
With an irreverence for punk rockers, adults like parents and politicians, non-adults like breasts and babies, and people we generally approve of such as artists and scientists, these works reveal that posers are sometimes better than the real thing.
Astria Suparak 