Conversation
January 21, 2026 | 6 to 7 p.m.
Aunties’ Work: In Conversation with Guest Curator Nadia Bunyan
Free Activity | Space is limited, Reservation required
The McCord Stewart Museum presents a conversation with Nadia Bunyan, curator of Aunties’ Work: The Power of Care, and Alexis Walker, Associate Curator, Dress, Fashion and Textiles. The conversation will highlight the community-based and collaborative approach to gathering both the artefacts and the stories that shaped the exhibition’s narrative. It will shed light on the curator’s methodology in exploring the role of Aunties within Montreal’s Black communities, and reflect on the opportunities and challenges or presenting community-driven exhibitions in a museum setting.
Informations
- Free activity in English, presented on Wednesday, January 21, 2026, from 6 to 7 p.m.
Space limited, reservation required. - Length: 60 minutes
- Location: J. Armand Bombardier Theatre at the Museum
About the speakers
Nadia Bunyan
Nadia Bunyan is a fashion designer, researcher, and community organizer. She believes we must begin with education and care to see change in the fashion industry and beyond. These core values led her to cofound Growing A.R.C. a nonprofit using the prism of material culture and its fashion systems, to explore activities grounded in the farm-to-closet process.
Beginning with agriculture for textiles and natural dyes, Growing A.R.C. creates activities such as playdates for people to activate, reciprocate and cultivate their relationships with all beings. The organization reinforces connections to the local environment by focusing on material culture and bioregional design. It also expands the understanding of biodiversity to include the diversity and perspectives of marginalized folks.
Nadia believes to raise awareness about a relational approach to sustainability knowledge and lived experiences must be shared. This is one facet of changing conversations on sustainability to a cultural practice.
Alexis Walker
Alexis Walker joined the McCord Stewart Museum as Curatorial Assistant, Dress, Fashion and Textiles in 2015. She has a BFA in Textiles from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and an MA in Fashion and Textiles Studies: History, Theory, Museum Practice from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. She is particularly interested in the intersections of contemporary fashion with art, music, film and pop culture.
She was curatorial assistant for Fashioning Expo 67 (2018), co-curator of Jean‑Claude Poitras: Fashion and Inspiration (2019), a joint exhibition with the Musée de la Civilisation, and curator of Parachute: Subversive Fashion of the ‘80s (2021), for which the Museum won the Costume Society of America’s 2023 Richard Martin Exhibition Award.
In addition to her curatorial work, Walker is an embroidery and textile artist as well as a former fashion and costume designer and stylist. She has taught fashion history at George Brown College in Toronto and LaSalle College in Montreal. She is a member of both the Costume Society of America and the Association of Dress Historians.
Exhibition
From October 23, 2025 to April 12, 2026
Aunties’ Work: The Power of Care
Aunties’ Work: The Power of Care honours the systems of support created by matriarchs of Montreal’s Black communities through the sartorial and cultural context that surrounds them.
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