Gwyneira Isaac

Dr. Gwyneira Isaac is a research anthropologist and curator of North American Ethnology in the Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. Her passion for museums and working with Native American communities began when training as a museum photographer, and she encountered a vast array of glass plate negatives, photographs and archives that documented the lives of Native Americans from the 19th century onwards. She realized that, up until that point, she had been deprived of access to this history as it had been largely absent from her text books. Since then, she has devoted herself to finding out anything she could about Native American culture—a journey that took her to graduate school at Oxford University, the Southwest region of the US to conduct fieldwork and, ultimately, to the National Museum of Natural History

Her main research focus is on how Native American communities tell their own histories, as described in her book Mediating Knowledges (2007), which tells the origin story of a tribal museum in Zuni, New Mexico. She is also interested in how different media, such as photography, exhibit models and now 3D printing, help us to understand how technology has shaped the depiction of humans and humanity over time. At the Smithsonian, she directs the Recovering Voices program that supports communities in accessing collections as part of their efforts to revitalize endangered languages and knowledge. Her current research projects include understanding Native American concepts of health and wellbeing, especially through cultural revitalization practices. 

Marta Ostajewska

Marta Ostajewska (º1980, Poland) performer and visual artist, PhD researcher at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow and at the University of Warsaw (Artes Liberales). Her M.A. in Multimedia Design was received from School of Arts in Ghent. She graduated also at the University of Lodz (Theory of literature). Her artistic activities were presented in several galleries and at the international theater’s stages: Croxhapox Gallery, Campo Victoria, Nieuwpoorttheater, NTGENT in Ghent, Rozentheater in Amsterdam, The Manhattan Gallery, Prexer, Factory of Art, Gallery Kobro, Posiadło Ksiezy Mlyn, Free Space Gallery in Lodz, Articule Gallery in Montreal, Industra Gallery in Brno. She has participated in many international projects, among others, in the artistic residency Human Hotel: Copenhagen in Denmark and in the international festivals (BIO50 in Ljubljana, RIAP2014 in Quebec City, Canada, PAB2015 in Bergen, Norway). She is co-chief editor of the artistic magazine Woof Woof Arf Arf. She publishes her artistic works and theoretical texts related to the modern art scene, site-specific art and performance art on the international stage.