BIOGRAPHY

Zoë Heyn-Jones is a white settler researcher-artist and cultural worker who grew up on Saugeen Ojibway land in Ontario, Canada and on Tz’utujil/Kaqchikel Maya land in Guatemala. Zoë holds a PhD in Visual Arts from York University and a graduate diploma in Latin American Studies from CERLAC (the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean, York University). Zoë is currently a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Sustainable Curating in the department of Visual Arts at Western University where she is developing an interdisciplinary arts-based project on food security, sovereignty and justice in Canada and Mexico. Zoë is also currently collaborating with her partner, architect Octavio Castro Gallardo, on a short film, publication and site-specific installation about the restoration of his 200+-year-old adobe family home in Jamiltepec, Oaxaca, Mexico, generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.

Zoë is one half of Dupla Molcajete, an emergent collaborative practice with Mexico City-based researcher-artist and cultural worker Beatriz Paz Jiménez. Dupla Molcajete works to create spaces for experimentation at the nexus of art, food, and culture from Mesoamerican perspectives, centering food justice and sustainability. Dupla Molcajete privileges ancestral knowledge and (perma)cultural practices between Mexico and Canada—and across the hemisphere—through cooking, eating, talking, writing, curating, publishing, collaging and making plant-based photochemical images (among other practices). Dupla Molcajete’s recent projects include an ongoing exploration of the Mesoamerican herb epazote through plant-based photochemical image-making and cultural histories and the nascent Entomofagía: Ancestral and Future Foods research-creation project that explores edible insects’ potential for food security and climate action. 

Zoë lives and works between Tenochtitlan/Mexico City and Tkaronto/Toronto.