—  About

Melanie Wilmink is an interdisciplinary curator and academic.

Born in South Africa, but now a Canadian by way of several other countries, straddling borders is at the heart of Melanie’s practice. Working as an art curator and academic, she is interested in the ways that art and life intertwine to bleed out into the transitional spaces of the public realm. Influenced by her history as someone who makes physical objects and encounters, her academic work focuses on the ways that art exhibitions shapes spectatorial experience, and act as a way for viewers to think “with” and “through” artwork.

These ideas stem from the belief that art has incredible power to bring together diverse ideas and to stimulate individual reflection. Each viewer’s encounter with an artwork is a conversation with the artwork, artists and other viewers, and in that meeting-point it may be possible to dream new worlds together. This is the philosophy that she carries forward in her curating, research, writing, and teaching.

Melanie Wilmink is a Banting Postdoctoral Researcher at Yonsei University (Seoul, South Korea) where she investigates the art of the Korean smart-city. She holds a PhD in Visual Art & Art History from York University (Toronto - 2020), with honours such as the 2014 Elia Scholars Award and a 2015 SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship. She completed her MA in Interdisciplinary Studies (Film and Visual Arts) at the University of Regina in 2014, where she was a research assistant on Dr. Christine Ramsay’s SSHRC funded “Atom Egoyan In Media Res” exhibition project, and was awarded a Joseph-Bombardier Canada Graduate Masters Scholarship and she received a BFA in Studio Art from the University of Calgary in 2007. With a dissertation focus on the inter-connectivity between spectatorial experience and exhibition spaces, her ongoing research emerged during her role programming for the Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers, and her independent curating practice including the Situated Cinema project (Pleasure Dome, 2015), and as Curator in Residence for Sidewalk Labs Toronto. She is the co-editor of the anthologies Sculpting Cinema (2018) and Landscapes of Moving Image (2021) with Solomon Nagler. She is a visiting scholar with Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts & Technology and an Eternal Affiliate with The City Institute at York University.