Biography

Gabrielle Moser is an art historian, writer, and independent curator. She is the author of Projecting Citizenship: Photography and Belonging in the British Empire (Penn State University Press, 2019) and, with Adrienne Huard (University of Manitoba), co-edited a special double issue of Journal of Visual Culture on reparation (2022). She is currently at work on her second book, under contract with McGill-Queen’s University Press, Citizen Subjects: Photography and Sovereignty in Post-War Canada, which surveys photographic collections from across Canada for evidence of Indigenous and racialized subjects picturing themselves as sovereign citizens to a global public after 1947: a moment marked by intensified decolonial and independence movements worldwide.

In addition to her work as an art historian, Moser is an active curator and art critic who has published more than 90 reviews and interviews on contemporary art in international magazines. She contributes regularly to Artforum, C magazine, esse, Prefix Photo and PUBLIC, and has published in the peer-reviewed journals the Journal of Visual Culture, Photography & Culture, Third Text and photographies. Recent exhibitions at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery (Vancouver), Oakville Galleries, and Gallery 44: Centre for Contemporary Photography (Toronto) have explored the work artists do with image-objects to alert viewers to what Ariella Aïsha Azoulay describes as potential histories (2019). She as given public talks about this research through the Walrus Talks and on CBC Radio, presented to middle school students in South Carolina, authored an Op Ed article in the Toronto Star, and organized an online video “classroom” on photography, race and citizenship.

Moser has held fellowships at the Paul Mellon Centre for the Study of British Art in London, UK, the Image Centre at Toronto Metropolitan University, the University of British Columbia, and the British Library, and she was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Brown University in 2017. She is a founding member of EMILIA-AMALIA—a feminist working group that, since 2016, has organized regular public events that increase intergenerational knowledge transmission—and is currently Associate Professor of Aesthetics and Art Education in the Faculty of Education at York University in Toronto, Canada.

Faculty & School/Dept

• Faculty of Education -

Courses Taught

• Un-learning the Archive: Facts, Fictions and Missing Histories (GS/EDUC 5235)

Selected Publications

• Gabrielle Moser (2023). Affidamento as Curatorial Methodology: Feminist Approaches to Pedagogy and Curating in the Work of EMILIA-AMALIA Journal of Curatorial Studies, 12 (2), 258 - 288. doi:https://doi.org/10.1386/jcs_00095_1.
• Gabrielle Moser (2022). When photographs fail, when monuments fall: Photography and Reparations in Canada (Lee Mackinnon, Ed.) Photography and Culture.
• Adrienne Huard and Gabrielle Moser (2022). Special issue: Reparation and Visual Culture (Adrienne Huard and Gabrielle Moser, Eds.) Journal of Visual Culture, 21 (1). doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/14704129221093638.
• Gabrielle Moser (2022). Race, Climate Change and the Photographic Negative in Richard Mosse's Heat Maps Third Text.
• Gabrielle Moser (2021). Settler colonialism's container technologies: photographing crates in the Canadian Arctic (1926-1953) Settler Colonial Studies. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/2201473X.2021.1884427.
• Gabrielle Moser (2020). Familial ties and citizen claims: photography and early civil rights activism in African-Canadian newspapers Visual Studies. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/1472586X.2020.1827973.
• Gabrielle Moser (2019). Projecting Citizenship: Photography and Belonging in the British Empire. Penn State University Press
• Gabrielle Moser (2019). Viola Desmond photograph -- now on $10 bill -- reminds us that her brave battle against prejudice went undepicted Toronto Star.
• Gabrielle Moser (2018). "No Looking After the Internet: Curatorial experiments and pedagogical failures in engaging difficult images" photographies, 11 (2-3), 313-327. doi:10.1080/17540763.2018.1445016.
• Gabrielle Moser (2017). "Photographing Imperial Citizenship" Journal of Visual Culture, 16 (2), 190-224. doi:10.1177/1470412917710826.
• Gabrielle Moser and Helena Reckitt (2016). "Feminist Tactics of Citation, Annotation, and Translation: Curatorial Reflections on the Now You Can Go programme" On.Curating (29).

Research Projects

*Photography and Biopolitics: Race, Visibility and Embodiment in 21st Century Image Culture

Reparative Frames: Visual Culture after Reconciliation

Failure is an Option: Assessing challenges and identifying resources for feminist artist-run culture

Picturing Race and Citizenship: photography and belonging in Canada

York University Affiliations/Cross Appointments

• Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies: Faculty Associate
• Digital Justice Research Cluster: Faculty Associate
• CYPIRN (Children and Young People Interdisciplinary Research Network): Co-Lead
• Centre for Feminist Research