From hesitant curator to budding scholar: How one U of T grad found her path

Sofia Alani Suleman didn’t know what she wanted to do after high school – except that she definitely didn’t want to become an art curator.

She felt she already had a lot in common with her aunt, a professional curator of Islamic art and architecture.

“I didn’t want to be like anyone else,” says Suleman. “I just wanted to do my own thing.”

But it took just one introductory art history course at the University of Toronto Scarborough for Suleman to change her mind. Now, she’s graduating with a major in art history and visual culture, and minors in curatorial studies and media studies.

In her first year, Suleman landed a work-study position at the campus’s Doris McCarthy Gallery (DMG). The mentorship she received there – and the consistent exposure to art, culture and community – cemented her love of curation and sparked a passion for decolonizing art and the spaces where it’s observed. 

With curator Sandy Saad-Smith’s guidance, Suleman curated the 2022 Cedar Ridge Creative Centre student exhibition, giving her firsthand insight into the responsibilities of a curator. 

She had found her path – the one she had tried so hard to avoid.

Suleman quickly adopted Saad-Smith’s mantra of always putting the artist’s voice first. When writing the short descriptive texts that accompany artworks –  a key responsibility for curators – she would send drafts to artists so they could co-edit them together.

“I learned to make sure you always, wherever you can, centre the artist’s voice – because at the end of the day, when you're writing, you're not replacing their voice.”

She brought same approach to what she calls her first “big girl job,” working with CIBC to help refine the bank’s fine art collection and make parts of it digitally accessible to employees. She sought out the opportunity after hearing a guest speaker in class discuss corporate art collections.

Suleman says she knew early on that she wanted to attend U of T Scarborough. In Grade 11, her religious studies class was scheduled to attend the annual TEDxUTSC conference. But when she arrived, the campus was quiet – she hadcome a week early by mistake. Still, she wandered around, and found that the campus felt “like home.”

“I felt at peace, and that was really interesting because I was doing university tours,” she says. “Nothing felt like this. There was just a peace of mind. I saw community.”

She initially chose the journalism program on a whim. Her mother, a professional career adviser, suggested it since Suleman enjoyed writing and talking to people. But Suleman ended up treating her undergraduate education like a buffet, sampling courses, programs and career paths from different fields.

Throughout this period, Suleman received strong support from her family. She was especially close with her grandparents and great aunt, turning to them for guidance and joy.

“I think I owe every part of me to each of my grandparents and my great aunt,” she says. 

But her life soon became filled with grief. Her great aunt died in 2021, followed by her paternal grandfather two years later and her maternal grandfather in 2024.

Suleman says she leaned on the Health & Wellness Centre for mental health support, and she relied on her professors, peers and family.

“My professors would sit with me and talk through the ideas with me, because I was so scattered I couldn't focus on a single thing. They just sat with me and worked through things with me.”

As an arts, culture and media peer mentor, she shared her experiences with other students and pointed them toward the resources she had found most helpful, including AccessAbility Services, the Writing Centre, attending office hours and simply reaching out.

“Listening to their stories was very inspiring. It reaffirmed why I want to stay in this field: to encourage students that they can be here – that they should be here,” Suleman says.

This fall, Suleman will begin a master’s degree in art history at Concordia University. With support from the Writing Centre and her professors, she also secured a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada grant for her research on three women-identifying contemporary artists of Pakistani descent.

She thanked her professors, the departmental librarian and others in her circle for their support. 

“It does take a village, and to people in my village, I'm just so grateful.”