Education
2022 PhD in Cultural Mediations (Visual Culture), Carleton University.
Thesis: Unruly Appreciations: How Contestation Shapes the Value of Pharaonic Things
2019 Diploma program in Curatorial Studies, Carleton University
2015 MA Cultural Studies, Queen’s University. Research-Creation project.
2010 Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours), Queen’s University.
Recent Exhibitions
Solo Shows
2023
We liberate one another, Corridor 45| 75, Ottawa, Ontario.
2019
We only liberate ourselves by binding our liberations with those of one another, SAW Video, Ottawa.
2016
Myth Marks, La Centrale Galerie Powerhouse, Montreal, Quebec.
2015
Myth Marks, Union Gallery (Project Room), Kingston, Ontario.
2010
Prayers & Meditations, Ajax Public Library, Ajax, Ontario.
2009
Convergence/Divergence, Union Gallery, Kingston, Ontario.
Harem Girls and Belly Dancers, The Artel, Kingston, Ontario.
2008
Kuffiyeh Kinderlach, Ban Righ Women’s Centre, Kingston, Ontario.
Group Shows
2025
Unfinished past: return, keep, or…?, Wereldmuseum Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Open studio event (with Pressing Matter artists), Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
2023
re- , FOFA Gallery, Montreal, Quebec.
Hyphen (-), G101, Ottawa, Ontario.
(unofficial) Nuit Blanche, The Bridge, 379 Adelaide St. W, Toronto, Ontario.
2021
Holding Pattern, City Hall Art Gallery, Ottawa, Ontario.
All Good Things Come in Threes, SAW Leipzig (online exhibition)
(Collaboration with Nadah El Shazly) Mutant Histories, Pique 2021, Arts Court, Ottawa, Ontario.
2020
(Collaboration with Wellington Sanipe) See/Hear/Move, “a graph, a lovely tree” SAW Video, Ottawa, Ontario.
See/Hear/Move, City Hall, Ottawa.
To Be Continued: Troubling the Queer Archive, Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa.
2019
Encyclopedias, Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre, Kingston, Ontario.
La voix des archives, LA CENTRALE Galerie Powerhouse, Montreal.
Public Syntax (with the Video in the Public Sphere working group), Critical Distance, Toronto.
2018
Unpacking the Living Room, MSVU Art Gallery, Halifax, Nova Scotia.
2017
Chinatown Remixed, Ottawa, Ontario.
2016
Canadian Belonging(s), Art Gallery of Mississauga, Mississauga, Ontario.
Dissonant Integrations, Z Art Space, Montreal, Quebec.
2014
New Henna, Lab Cab Festival, Toronto, Ontario.
Hair Lines, Chipped Off Performance Festival, Kingston, Ontario.
Chinatown Remixed, Ottawa, Ontario.
2013
Create This Revolution, Gallery 101, Ottawa, Ontario.
2012
No Two Alike, The Modern Fuel Artist Run Centre, Kingston, Ontario.
Figureworks III, St. Brigid’s Arts Centre, Ottawa, Ontario.
VDay 2012, The Bronson Centre, Ottawa, Ontario.
2011
Big Smalls IV, Cube Gallery, Ottawa, Ontario.
101 Frames: Gluttony, G101, Ottawa, Ontario.
2010
Figureworks, Rothwell Gallery, Ottawa, Ontario.
BFA Select, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Ontario.
2008 Harem Girls and Bellydancers, The Artel, Kingston, Ontario.
Curatorial Projects
2025 Intersections, Art Museum of the Americas, Washington, DC.
2024 A Dream of Return, Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa, ON.
2022 Intersections, Art Gallery of the Canadian Embassy, Washington, DC.
2021 #AMAatHome, Art Museum of the Americas, Washington, DC. (online due to pandemic restrictions).
2019 Home/Making; Canada Council Art Bank, Ottawa.
2015 Turbines Curatorial Collective presents: UTOPIAS performance art festival, Kingston, Ontario.
Grants, Awards, and Residencies
2024 InHerit: heritage in transformation. Käte Hamburger Centre for Advanced Study, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
2023 Pressing Matter artist residency, in association with Rijksakademie and Wereldmuseum network, Netherlands. VIU Visualizing Cities Digital Art History Summer Institute, Venice, Italy (as part of Mobile Subjects, Contrapuntal Modernisms).
2022 Carleton University Senate Medal for Outstanding Achievement
2021 Emerging Artist Grant, Ottawa Arts Council.
2020 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Fellowship.
2019 Pillars of the Nile Association Award.
2018 Reesa Greenburg Curatorial Studies Award, Carleton University.
2017 Emerging Artist Grant, Ottawa Arts Council.
2017 Imam Tawfiq Shaheen Memorial Scholarship for research in Muslim communities.
Best Graduate Student Paper Award, Canadian Journal of Communications Conference, Ottawa.
2016 Impressions Residency, Montreal Museum of Fine Art, Montreal, Quebec.
2012 Spark Box Studio Emerging Artist Residency Award, Picton, Ontario.
2009 Atelier of Alexandria, Alexandria, Egypt.
Writing
Peer reviewed publications:
- Pansee Abou ElAtta, “More-than-human networks through Dutch museum collections” (In revisions)
- Pansee Abou ElAtta, Legitimizing Ḥurma As A Mode Of Affective Relation To Antiquity, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology (Forthcoming/2026)
- Pansee Abou ElAtta, “The Moon Upon its Fourteenth Night: Embodied archives, gendered histories, and decolonial story-telling practices.” Worlding Public Cultures Chapbook Series, ICI Press (Forthcoming/2026)
- Pansee Abou ElAtta, “Belonging in Egypt”, in Echoes of Ancient Egypt, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (In preparation, forthcoming, 2026/2027)
- Pansee Abou ElAtta, “More-than-Human Networks? Dutch Museum Collections” in tbc. working through heritage concepts, inherit. heritage in transformation, Berlin, 2025. https://doi.org/10.18452/34377
- Atta, Pansee. “Feeling Unproductive: Vivek Shraya on the Creative Labor of Negative Affect.” Re/Imagining Depression. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2021. 119-132. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80554-8_10
Other:
- “Buraq,” Ottawa Inshallah, Silk Road Institute, 2021.
- “Histories, Real and Imagined: 5 Contemporary Photographers Challenging Misrepresentations of the Middle East.” .ART, June 30, 2022. https://art.art/blog/histories-real-and-imagined-5-contemporary-photographers-challenging-misrepresentations-of-the-middle-east
- “Home/Making: Remixing the everyday.” Canada Council Art Bank, May 28, 2019. https://artbank.ca/blog/2019/5/homemaking
Conferences, Performances, and Talks
2026 “Egyptian Human Remains in Museums: Rethinking terminologies and modes of display” LeidenGlobal Dialogues, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (with Daniel Soliman)
2025 “Contrapuntal Modernisms. Modeling Situated Transnational Art Histories in Paris and London,” DH2025, Lisbon, Portugal (Collaboration with Mobile Subjects, Contrapuntal Modernisms)
“What can Ancient Egyptian mummies tell us about Dutch collection histories?”, Netherlands Institute for the Near East, Leiden University, the Netherlands
Artist discussion with Sara Sallam, Decolonizing Archaeological Epistemologies, Leiden, the Netherlands
2024 “What Heritage Hides,” Humboldt University, Berlin.
“Thinking through the Museum,” Carleton University, Ottawa.
“To Make One Partickle of The Public Soul of All Things,” Wereldmuseum Amsterdam (Performance).
2023 “Legitimizing El Ḥurma as an Egyptian mode of affective relation to antiquity,” International Conference of Egyptologists, Leiden, Netherlands.
“A Grassroots Social History of the Bust of Nefertiti,” Social History Conference, Essex, UK.
“Porous Borders: Ambiguities, Uncertainties, and Gaps in Urban History, Identities, and Data,” DHBenelux 2023, Brussels, Belgium. With Ming Tiampo, Maribel Hidalgo-Urbaneja, and Janneke Van Hoeve.
2022 “Mobile Subjects, Contrapuntal Modernisms,” Mass Data Methodologies, Paul Mellon Centre for British Art, London (Co-presented with Janneke Van Hoeve, Ming Tiampo, and Maribel Hidalgo Urbaneja)
“What if museum history was a history of contestation?” Universities Art Association of Canada conference 2022, Toronto, Ontario.
“How Egyptian repatriative efforts shaped public understandings of the Bust of Nefertiti,” American Research Center in Egypt Annual Conference, Irvine, California.
“The Moon upon its Fourteenth Night: Embodied archives, gendered histories, and decolonial story-telling practices,” Lessons Learned? Transcultural Perspectives in Curating and Pedagogies, Worlding Public Cultures, Dresden, Germany.
2021 “Tutankhamun’s tomb, anti-colonial contestation, and the construction of the ‘Treasures’ exhibition,” American Research Center in Egypt Annual Conference (online due to pandemic restrictions).
2019 “Keywords” panel, Reparative Frames: Visual Culture After Reconciliation, OCAD University, Toronto, Ontario.
Guest lecture: “Egypt and decolonial approaches to museology,” in FAVA 4066: Issues in Curation & Museum Representation, Nipissing University.
2017 Journal of Historical Materialism Conference, SOAS, University of London, UK.
Universities Art Association of Canada conference 2017, Banff, Alberta.
Guest Lecture: “Special Topics in Arab Canadian Studies” class in University of Ottawa , Ontario.
Hyper/in/visibility: A Dialogue on Women of Colour in the Arts, Studio 66, Ottawa.
Rethinking Canada 150: Networks and Nodes in Asian Canadian Visual Culture, Ottawa.
Off The Record, Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Art, and Culture, Carleton University.
2016 Universities Art Association of Canada conference 2016, UQAM, Montreal.
Vitriol: Art and its Discontents, Art History Graduate Student Association, Concordia University.
Ethnocultural Art Histories Research, Art History Department, Concordia University.
2015 Visual Bites in Context: Research-in-Conversation, Union Gallery, Kingston.
Undisciplined, Department of Cultural Studies, Queen’s University.
Media Coverage
2025 Skeleton in the closet: show asks questions on colonial objects, Dutch News.
Wereldmuseum Amsterdam ponders space to ‘respectfully’ house human remains, The Art Newspaper.
Vuile handen maken, De Groene Amsterdammer.
2024 CUAG’s ‘A Dream of Return’ showcases creative resistance through contemporary art, The Charlatan
2022 To be Continued: Troubling the Queer Archive at Carleton University Gallery (Review)
2021 Ottawa Inshallah, Rogers TV (Review)
2016 “Terence Dick: CANADIAN BELONGING(S) AT THE ART GALLERY OF MISSISSAUGA” (Review).
2015 “Myth Marks makes move to decolonize museums”, Queen’s Journal, Sept 25 (Review).
2009 On Sex and Text: Women and the Koran. “The Body as a Site of Discrimination: Exploring and Resisting Body-Based Oppressions”.
Work and Volunteer Experience
2023 Assistant Curator, Global Affairs, Ottawa.
2022 Instructor, Representations of Ancient Egypt in Visual Culture, ARTH4809D, Carleton University, Ottawa.
2022 Sideways residency visiting artist, Modern Fuel Artist Run Centre (online).
2019 Juror, City of Ottawa Arts Funding Program – Film and Video.
2017 Advisory Board Member, Carleton University Art Gallery.
2016 How does science inspire you? Mural project, Canada Museum of Science & Technology, Ottawa.
Teaching Assistanceship, Art History: Prehistory to Contemporary, Carleton University.
2015 Vice President Community Relations, PSAC 901, Kingston.
2014 Event Coordination, Wikipedia Edit-a-thon, Kingston.
2013 Teaching Assistanceship, Studio Fundamentals, Queen’s University.
Teaching Assistanceship, Art in Society 210, Queen’s University.
Board Member, Modern Fuel Artist Run Centre, Kingston.
Communications Committee Chair, Modern Fuel Artist Run Centre,
2012 Volunteer, G101, Ottawa.
Volunteer, Indigenous People’s Solidarity Movement Ottawa.
Volunteer, Pink Triangle Services, Ottawa.
2010 Selections Committee, Union Gallery, Kingston.
2009 Gallery Assistant (Internship) The Modern Fuel Artist Run Centre, Kingston.
Art Director, ArtReach, Kingston.
2008 Instructor, ArtReach, Kingston.