Joanna Black (BA Fine Arts & English Literature; MA, PhD in Arts Education) has been active since 1989 in visual art as an artist, curator, and speaker. She is a Professor at the University of Manitoba (U of M ) in Visual Art Education and is cross-appointed as an Adjunct Professor at the School of Art (U of M). Black has also served as a Senior Artist/Researcher in Residence for the WIAprojects, Center for Women Studies in Education (CWSE), at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto.  Currently, she teaches visual art and digital art education at the University of Manitoba.

Black has exhibited her new media, painting, multimedia and performance artworks in Canada and the United States in solo and group shows. Her focus is political. While socially engaged art—as a category of practice—is still a working construct, the artist who identifies as such is an individual whose specialty includes working professionally with/in society.  Her recent new media and performance artworks include Babel/Babble proVOKing CO-llaBORation/IN/performance at the University of Toronto; Provocation at OCADU Toronto; ECHoes & ReVERBS @ Ivory Towers at the CWSE Gallery, Toronto and MAWA Gallery Winnipeg; Making Time: and A Digital Exhibition, Audain Art Center, Vancouver. 

Black’s artworks, research, curating and teaching have centered upon creative digital art practices, feminist art, women in academia, human rights issues, learning for social change, partnerships/community action, and environmental art education. As a result of her research and artmaking she has published books, articles, reviews in a variety of journals, art catalogues, and exhibition catalogues. For over thirty years she has worked as an art educator, art director, museum educator, curator, art consultant, and a visual art educator in formal and informal settings in Canada and the United States.