Kate Henderson is a passionate cultural worker invested in socially engaged art, emergent practices, collaboration and care.
Kate Henderson is a curator, writer, educator, artist and cultural worker of white UK settler ancestry, based on the unceded (stolen) territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations (Vancouver, Canada). Kate acknowledges the colonial history that made it possible for her great-grandparents to relocate to Turtle Island from England in the early 1900s and aims to dismantle and unlearn oppression through lifelong learning and anti-racist action.
Kate is committed to amplifying the voices of emerging and underrepresented artists. Through her curatorial work, which primarily focuses on lens-based media, she seeks to decentre patriarchal and oppressive legacies by finding connections between artists who explore the many-faceted aspects of identity, labour and personal histories. In particular, her research has a keen interest in gender, access, motherhood, care, decolonization and the interstices between.
Kate has held curatorial positions at Capture Photography Festival, Vancouver (Director/Curator, 2018-20); Art Gallery at Evergreen (AGE), Coquitlam (Interim Curator, 2021-22); Gordon Smith Gallery of Canadian Art, North Vancouver (Guest Curator, 2022) and Vancouver Art Gallery (Curatorial Assistant, 2015-2017). Kate is particularly interested in public art and has curated numerous public art projects in her roles at Capture and AGE. She is currently Public Art Project Manager at HOST Consulting, an Indigenous-led public art consultancy founded by three women from each of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.
From 2014 to 2018, Kate served on the Board of Directors at Access Artist-Run Centre, Vancouver, where she was president from 2016 to 2018. Kate has taught at Emily Carr University of Art + Design (ECUAD), University of British Columbia (UBC), Arts Umbrella and ArtStarts in the photography and visual arts programs. Her work has been exhibited across Vancouver at Access Gallery, Burrard Arts Foundation, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Belkin Satellite, Gallery 295 and the AHVA Gallery at the Audain Art Centre at UBC. She holds an MFA in Visual Arts from UBC, Vancouver (2013) and a BFA from ECUAD, Vancouver, with a Major in Photography (2007).
Portrait: Alexa Mazzarello