Barbara Astman is an artist, curator and professor emerita. She curated an exhibition at Koffler Arts featuring photographers Elinor Carucci and Hannah Altman (on view until August 17, 2025). We asked her about the focus of the exhibition and the artists involved, where she finds inspiration, and her advice for recent graduates.
Kultura Collective: Hi Barbara! Can you please tell us a bit about you and your artistic practice?
Barbara Astman: I am originally from Rochester, NY and moved here in 1970 to attend the Ontario College of Art, (now OCAD U). I thought I would be here for a couple of years, but I very quickly was offered a teaching position at OCA which eventually led to me being a tenured Professor. My career was also taking off and I was taken on by Jared Sable, Sable Castelli Gallery when I was in my early 20’s so, here I am all these years later still here and glad of it! My art practice has been focused around a feminist perspective and my mediums vary but many consider me an early Camera Art originator. Last year I was awarded a Governor Generals Award in Visual and Media Arts so it was great to receive this recognition after this decades long career. I most recently did a solo survey exhibition at the Paul Kyle Gallery in Vancouver and also show here in Toronto with the Corkin Gallery.
KC: The exhibition you curated at Koffler Arts featuring photographers Elinor Carucci and Hannah Altman is now on view. Can you tell us about the artists?
BA: They are both fascinating accomplished photographers who bring a humanity and warmth to their images. Carucci is an award winning photographer who has received a Guggenheim Fellowship along with a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation award. Her work is collected internationally and she is currently on the faculty in the graduate program of photography at the School of the Visual Arts in New York City. The Carucci works we are exhibiting at the Koffler Gallery is a selection from the Midlife (2011 -2019) series, which explores the years of middle life from a female perspective. It delves into themes of the body, health, relationships and overall brings attention to the challenges of this period of a woman’s’ life.
Hannah Altman graduated with an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2018 and has gone on to become the inaugural Blanksteen Artist in Residents at the Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale (2023) and most recently, As It Were, Suspended in Midair, is currently on exhibition at the Kniznick Galley, Brandeis University, MA.
Hannah Altman’s work explores themes of ritual and lineage, memory and storytelling incorporating aspects of Jewish culture. The photographs she is exhibiting at the Koffler Gallery are from her most recent book, titled We Will Return to You. To quote Hannah: “From mouth to ear to pen to performance, Jewish myths evolve across the diaspora, braiding themselves into past and future.”
KC: What is the focus of the exhibition? What brings Elinor and Hannah’s work together?
BA: The focus of this exhibition is to highlight the remarkable work that they each have created. To bring their work to a Toronto audience. To create a dialogue between their practices. Many people might have been familiar with Elinor’s work through her books and her commercial work for important publications like the New York Times and People magazine. Hannah is a much younger photographer and although highly accomplished, I think her work was new to the Toronto audience. I think there is a kinship and relationship that exists between their work. I had assumed that they had met and was surprised to learn that their meeting here, in Toronto at the Koffler, was the first time they met in person. I really felt we are kindred spirits.
KC: The photographs in the exhibition use an approach that is personal and draws on the artists’ Jewish and feminist backgrounds. How did you approach curating the exhibition?
BA: Hannah’s work is more directly tied into Jewish rituals, not in a direct or illustrative way, more inspired by them. I wanted to find a common ground between their work that would create a narrative between their practices. When we discussed (on zoom) how being Jewish might have influenced their work, Elinor was less convinced of their being a direct link from that place to her works. They both felt their work reflected a strong feminist underpinning. Hannah’s work is void of any males which I found fascinating. In terms of curating the exhibition, I worked closely with each artist to create a shortlist of images based on their specific bodies of work and then over zoom we worked together on potential layouts until we were both excited about the results. They were both wonderful to work with and it felt like a true collaboration. The most exciting moment for me was when they each came to Toronto for the opening, walked into the exhibition and exclaimed how excited they were and how happy they were with the over all layout and installation.
KC: How is your work inspired by tradition and ritual?
BA: I don’t feel that either tradition or ritual apply to my work which is of an experimental nature. In fact – I am always trying to break the rules, not follow them! My mantra to my students was other than health and safety, forget the rules and break them and create your own!
KC: Your practice has spanned many different mediums – including photography, public art, and installation. Where do you find inspiration for your work?
BA: I find inspiration all around me, my life, what I collect, what I am reading, seeing and thinking about. I try not to be tied into a medium – believing that anything can be art and I have the ability to do the research and find how to create anything. It is getting rid of your fears of failure that helps you to feel open to working in any medium. I have created sidewalks and windows for developers. I know nothing about glass or cement, but being open to learning and finding the best fabricators lets you create in any medium. My most recent work, Woven Stories, 2023, is all tapestries!
KC: You have also taught at OCAD University. Considering its convocation season, what’s one piece of advice you would offer a recent graduate in the arts today?
BA: It takes a lot of work, don’t expect things to be easy – so hang in there and keep on creating and create art that is true to your own voice.
KC: What’s inspiring you Jewish-ly lately?
BA: The state of the world makes me think about my Jewishness now more than ever.
KC: Lightning round question!
- Brisket vs roasted chicken? I have to say my mother’s brisket which I miss terribly.
- Pickled herring vs gefilte fish? Pickled Herring.
- Larry David vs Jerry Seinfeld? Jerry Seinfeld of course!
Barbara Astman belongs to a visionary group of artists who have continued to radicalize visual culture since the early 1970s by defining new ways of seeing. Over four decades, she has explored a wide range of photo-based media and produced work, which has received national and international recognition. She is represented in important public, corporate and private collections including the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Deutche Bank, New York, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Her artist’s archives are held in the E.P. Taylor Research Library & Archives, AGO.
Astman has an extensive and prestigious solo exhibition history, most recently, Barbara Astman, Woven Stores (Corkin Gallery, 2023). Barbara Astman Looking: Then and Now, a two-part exhibition (Corkin Gallery, 2016) and Barbara Astman: I as artifact featuring a new series of works accompanied by a comprehensive publication (McIntosh Gallery, 2014). In May 2011, her installation, Dancing with Che: Enter through the Gift Shop, (Kelowna Art Gallery, 2013) toured across Canada. Her major touring retrospective exhibition, Barbara Astman – Personal/Persona – A 20 Year Survey was curated by Liz Wylie (Art Gallery of Hamilton, 1995).
Major group exhibitions include: The Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts 2024 exhibition (NGC, 2024) Decade (Koffler Gallery, Toronto) Toronto: Tributes + Tributaries, 1971-1989 (AGO, 2016), Living Building Thinking: Art and Expressionism (McMaster Museum of Art, 2016), Look Again: Colour Xerography Art Meets Technology (AGO, 2015), Herland, (60 Wall Gallery, New York 2014), Light My Fire Part I: Some Propositions about Portraits and Photography (AGO, 2013), and Beautiful Fictions (AGO, 2009).
As a Professor Emerita at OCAD University, Toronto, she has been instrumental in inspiring generations of emerging artists. Active in the Toronto arts community, Astman has served on numerous boards and advisory committees, including the AGO Board of Trustees (2009- 2013) and was President o f the Board of Directors at Prefix (ICA) Institute of Contemporary Art, Toronto.
In 2024, Astman was awarded the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts.
Astman is represented by Corkin Gallery, Toronto and Paul Kyle Gallery, Vancouver.
www.barbaraastman.com | @astmanba on Instagram
Koffler Arts is excited to welcome photographers Elinor Carucci and Hannah Altman to our gallery for an exhibition (May 29 – August 17), curated by Toronto-based artist Barbara Astman. The exhibition highlights the unique dynamic that exists between each artist’s practice and their different life stages, exploring life from a Jewish feminist perspective, including womanhood, rituals, family, and the human condition.
Learn more about the exhibition at https://www.kofflerarts.org/whatson/exhibitions/exhibition/elinor-carucci-hannah-altman
Koffler Arts is a multi-disciplinary arts platform that celebrates Jewish artistic voices within a diverse and exploratory framework of contemporary expression. Firm believers in the inherent value of art as an essential vehicle for creating meaning and providing enjoyment, we strive to affirm our collective need for the compass and connection offered by the artist’s eye upon the world.
Through its prismatic web of programming, Koffler Arts seeks to engage audiences in artful, constructive, at times disruptive, at others playful ways, using every opportunity to broaden and refine the multiple lenses through which we see the world.
