Leah Decter
Leah Decter is an inter-media artist and scholar based in Winnipeg; Treaty 1 territory. Her artwork, research and writing focus on contested spaces, largely contending with histories and contemporary conditions of settler colonialism and systems of white dominance from a critical white-settler perspective. Her current artistic/research-creation projects address social-spatial dynamics of settler colonial contexts and consider the ethics of being-in-relation in spaces of Indigenous sovereignty. Her current research and writing focus on arts-based critical white settler methodologies that aim to contribute to the goals of decolonial, non-colonial and anti-racist movements.
Decter has exhibited, presented and screened her work widely in Canada, including at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, Plugin ICA, Dunlop Art Gallery, McKenzie Art Gallery, Trinity Square Video, Kamloops Art Gallery, Grunt Gallery, and internationally in the US, UK, Germany, Malta, Australia, Netherlands and India. She has undertaken social practice projects and performances across the country and her curatorial work includes Mammo’iiang to Make Change(with Jaimie Isaac) and the ongoing project oh-oh Canada. Her artwork has been featured in The Journal of Canadian Art History, Craft and Design in Canada, Fuse Magazine, Border Crossing and the Journal of Canadian Studies and her recent journal articles have been published in the Journal of Critical Race Inquiry, Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studiesand Canadian Theatre Review. Her co-authored writing (with Carla Taunton, Ayumi Goto and Jaimie Isaac respectively) has been published in Fuse Magazine’s Decolonizing Aesthetics Issue, The Land We Are: Artists and Writers Unsettle the Politics of Reconciliation and West Coast Line #74: Reconcile This!. She is currently co-editing a special issue ofPUBLIC Journal (with Carla Taunton) which will be available in the fall of 2021.
Decter holds a PhD in Cultural Studies from Queens University and an MFA in New Media from Transart Institute. In 2017 She was a Visiting Research Fellow at University of New South Wales’ National Institute for Experimental Arts in Sydney, Australia. From 2019-2020 she was a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow in Theatre and Performance Studies at York University's Sensorium Centre for Digital Arts and Technology. She currently holds a Canada Research Chair in Creative Technologies in the Media Arts Division at NSCAD University.
Advisor: Studio