My Colleagues‘ News

Borda is a practising media artist and curator with over a decade of experience in lecturing about photography and Western art histories. She is also considered a Canadian pioneer in leading media innovation through the adaptation and re-use of frugal technologies to produce contemporary artworks. She's been acknowledged as the first artist to successfully stage tableau vivant in the Google Street View engine and for her work in partnership with Google Trusted Photographer, John M Lynch, won the Lumen Prize (2016), which was judged by Doug Dodds, Senior Curator, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, Foteini Aravani, Digital Curator, Museum of London; Tessa Jackson OBE, independent curator and consultant; Weiwei Wang, Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai; and Bruce Wands, Chair Emeritus, School of Visual Arts, New York.

She has held teaching positions in Canada at the University of British Columbia (2000-06) and Emily Carr University of Art and Design (2005-07). In the UK, she led the MA programme in Photography at Queen’s University Belfast (2007-09), BA (Hons) Photography at the University of Salford-Manchester as Senior Lecturer (2010), Visiting Arts Lecturer, University of Stirling, Scotland (2009-2016)

Borda was the recipient of an EU award (2014-18) and Fellow of the Frontiers in Retreat programme, developing artworks in Finland, Latvia and Scotland which used emergent technologies from hunting cameras to video drones as a way to study, research and respond to changing urban and rural landscapes. Her collaboration with a number of independent and national agricultural organisations to produce, Farm Tableaux, produced a portrait of contemporary Finnish farming completed using Google Street view technologies for public exhibition. Equally Borda was developing collaborations with partners to stage a national colloquium amongst different Finnish food producers and food campaigners in order to create a draft Food Charter for national and parliamentary debate. It was hoped that a Food Charter might be amended to the constitution, thus, protecting the rights of Finnish citizens to access local foods now and into the future. These aspirations are continuing to be produced.

Such work illustrates Borda’s affinity for critical debate about contemporary matters and exploration in digital media and innovation. In 2013 she was recipient of funds from BC Film and Media’s Arts Innovation Fund and BC Creative Communities to develop visual artworks using aerial drone videography, 3D stereoscopy, and Google Streetview mapping technologies. She is the first known artist creating artworks in Google Street view in partnership with Google Trusted Photographer, John Lynch. Additionally, she completed a commission for Streetlevel Photoworks (2013-14) in Glasgow in which the physical camera became the subject of an epic 100 image digital portfolio. Borda has also received a number of other public grants and awards including City of Richmond Public Art Commission: No.4 Pump Station (2010-11), Cultural Capital of Canada Artist status award in combination with Cultural Olympiad project status for the Winter Olympics (2008-10), the Innovation Award, The Lighthouse Gallery Glasgow (2006), and the Urban Culture Award (through the Millennium Commission, Cities of Culture Liverpool) for 2005-07.

She is the author of “The Artist’s Photographic Book: Towards a Definition” in Photography and the Artist’s Book, MuseumsEtc Publishers, Edinburgh (2012) and “Comments on Skinning our Tools (2003)“ in Banff New Media Institute Dialogues Euphoria and Dystopia, Banff Centre Press and Riverside Architectural Press (2012).

Borda has been involved in recent solo exhibitions over the last three years at Street Level Photoworks Gallery (Glasgow), Belfast Exposed (Northern Ireland), Surrey Art Gallery (Canada), A&D Gallery (London) in addition, to group shows at The MAC (Northern Ireland), presentation events as part of the Venice Architectural Biennale events sponsored by the British Council (2014), and Zoo Arte (Cuneo, Italy). She continues to lecture widely on photography, new media, and imaging in Canada, USA, and the UK.