Diane Gistal is an independent cultural producer and curator living in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. She is the founder and executive director of Nigra Iuventa, a non-profit organization dedicated to developing innovative contemporary art projects based on research and critical discourse on the practices of Afrodescendant and African artists and curators. In 2021, the organization received the Montreal Arts Council’s "Our Equity Essentials" Grand Prize. She is also the co- founder of Black Joy MTL, a platform that seeks to cultivate joy and promote wellness within Black communities.
Her curatorial practice centers around African and Afro-Caribbean communities’ care, vulnerability, and agentivity in creating new paradigms and discourses that radically oppose a colonial doxa that erases singularities. As such, she is interested in the various literary, visual, cinematic, and everyday representations of black people’s lives. Her recent curatorial work includes Subalterns (CDEx, 2019), Je sais pourquoi l’oiseau chante en cage (Darling Foundry, Georges-Vanier Cultural Center and CDEx, 2020), Respiration (Galerie de l’UQAM, 2020) and S’inscrire dans le présent (Never Apart, 2021).