Johanna Lasner (Guayaquil, 1970) is an independent curator and artist based in White Rock, Canada. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree with specialization in Curatorial Practice and is currently pursuing a master’s degree at the Postgraduate Program in Philosophy for Contemporary Challenges at the University Oberta de Catalunya. She comes from a cross-cultural, global perspective and a range of trans-disciplinary trainings, blurring the lines between object making, activism and community organizing. 

Her approach to curating is based on the collaborative, participatory and socially engaged practice, with an interest in agency, community and research, mobilizing opportunities for action within creative practices and public audiences. In her own words, “I deeply care and value in advocating at the intersection of decolonial aesthetics and people, which will spawn action and positive change for our collective future. More than ever, I find important for the art sector to relate to the most urgent questions of contemporary challenges to welcome and support inclusion, equity and diversity in our communities. I’m invested in building empathy and mutual understanding by bringing together programming, critical and diverse works, as well as, promoting an art’s economy for emerging and underrepresented artists”.

Lasner uses her intimate stories, inextricably linked to the human and natural world to explore ethical relationships by trying to understand relations, situations, contexts, and values that enhance our power to act in the world. “My practice involves self-initiation and referentiality. In my work there are claims for a synthesis between abstraction and different ideas of articulation of the commons. I often reflect on the current mismatch between what is real and what is possible, between abundance and scarcity, between what we know and what we do not know, leading me to unusual concepts that open up the possibility of dealing with our personal and collective concerns to produce new forms of resistance. I am looking for the occasion at which the most absurd becomes a radical gesture of self within social composition”. 

One could find many references to the work, but the one particularly important to the artist is to the Art Informel paralleled to the Abstract Expressionism in the U.S.

Lasner's passion for community involvement takes her to participate in many local and international sociocultural projects. She has been a volunteer for the Canadian Mill Woods Assembly Medical/Dental Mission assisting Guatemala since 2008 until present. She currently serves at the Surrey Art Gallery. She is a member of the Network for Arts Administrators of Color the Pittsburgh Chapter of ArtsBoston's NAAC program and the Independent Curators International (ICI).