Helga Pakasaar is a contemporary art curator and writer based in Vancouver, Canada. She has worked as Audain Chief Curator at Polygon Gallery (formerly Presentation House Gallery). She has also curated exhibitions for Griffin Art Projects in North Vancouver and previously worked as a curator at the Art Gallery of Windsor and the Walter Phillips Gallery.
Curatorial work
Pakasaar has produced exhibitions, commissions and publications with a focus on historical and contemporary photography and media art, such as C. 1983, Not Necessarily In That Order, Larry Clark, Stan Douglas, Lee Friedlander, Miroslav Tichy, Elizabeth Zvonar, and Kohei Yoshiyuki. Her curatorial endeavours encompass public art commissions as with Rebecca Belmore: Hacer Memoria, Samuel Roy-Bois, Moodyville, including a special issue of The Capilano Review, Territory, co-produced with Artspeak, Vancouver. Pakasaar has presented international artists, including Rosella Biscotti, Cao Fei, Keren Cytter, Jimmie Durham, Susan Hiller, Gonzalo Lebrija, Anna Oppermann, Walid Raad, Batia Suter, Wael Shawky, Simon Starling, Marianne Wex, and many westcoast artists. In 2015, Pakasaar curated the inaugural exhibition at Griffin Art Projects, showcasing art held in private collections and emphasizing the role of women collectors.
Selected curatorial projects
Jeremy Shaw: DMT, (publication) & Jack Goldstein: Under Water Sea Fantasy (publication), 2004
Judy Radul: Downes Point and So Departed (Again), 2005 (publication)
Territory, 2006 (publication)
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy & Simon Starling, 2007
Moodyville, 2008 (publication)
Not Necessarily in that Order, 2010
Flakey: The Early Works of Glenn Lewis, 2010
C.1983, Part I and Part 11, 2012
Anna Oppermann / Andrea Pinheiro / Marianne Wex, 2013
Stan Douglas: Synthetic Pictures, 2014
A Thousand Quarrels: Liz Magor, 2014
Tris Vonna-Michell, 2015
B.C. Almanac(H) C-B, 2015 (publication)
Susan Hiller: Altered States, 2018
Hannah Rickards: one can make out the surface only by..., 2018