Posted on August 15, 2016
Month: August 2016
Photos from the Event: The Artist as ‘Anamorphic Stain’
Hyperallergic on Steve Cannon: “Blindness, Memory, and the Vestiges of Anarchy”
Posted on August 23, 2016
“Blindness, Memory, and the Vestiges of Anarchy” on Hyperallergic
http://hyperallergic.com/71394/blindness-memory-and-the-vestiges-of-anarchy/
by Megan Youngblood
May 17, 2013
Independent Curators International Makes its Way to the Philippines
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Independent Curators International Makes its Way to the Philippines
Featured in Blouin ArtInfo
by Claire Bouchara
August 22, 2016
2016 Curatorial Forum | EXPO CHICAGO
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The EXPO CHICAGO 2016 Curatorial Forum provides leading curators a unique opportunity to meet and exchange, and exclusive access to EXPO CHICAGO. The Forum will allow the curators to discuss current and upcoming exhibitions with colleagues, dealers and attending artists, acting as a catalyst for future collaborative programming with EXPO CHICAGO.
In partnership with ICI, EXPO CHICAGO is organizing a Symposium as a key element of the 2016 Curatorial Forum programming, and the week’s concluding event.
Presented at the Graham Foundation in the historic Madlener House, the Symposium is a closed-door presentation and conversation featuring Sally Tallant, Director of Liverpool Biennial. It will focus on the importance and specificities of international art events in regional capitals, with Liverpool Biennial as a case study. Since 2012, Tallant has transformed Liverpool Biennial by expanding its organizational model to include and prioritize ongoing research, education and production, developing a creative community, and building the city as a place of artistic experimentation.
Sally Tallant is a Board Member of the International Biennial Association and a member of the London Regional Council for Arts Council England; and was formerly Head of Programmes at the Serpentine Gallery, London.
CURATORIAL FORUM PARTICIPANTS
Stéphane Aquin, Hirshhorn Museum of Art
Natalie Bell, New Museum of Contemporary Art
Leonardo Bigazzi, Lo schermo dell’arte
Florence Derieux, Centre Pompidou Foundation
Leesa Fanning , Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
Alison Ferris, Des Moines Art Center
Jennifer Gheith, SF MOMA
Toby Kamps, Menil Collection
Naima Keith, California African American Museum
Simon Kelly, St Louis Art Museum
Alex Klein, ICA Philadelphia
Sara Krajewski, Portland Art Museum
Dhyandra Lawson, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Justine Ludwig, Dallas Contemporary
Catharina Manchanda, Seattle Art Museum
Aram Moshayedi, Hammer Museum
Laura Mott, Cranbrook Art Museum
Monica Obniski, Milwaukee Art Museum
Rory Padeken, San Jose Museum of Art
Drew Sawyer, Columbus Museum of Art
Elisabeth Sherman, Whitney Museum
Brian Sholis, Cincinnati Art Museum
Belinda Tate, Kalamazoo Institute of Arts
Susan Thompson, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Gilbert Vicario, Phoenix Art Museum
CHICAGO-BASED CURATORIAL INTENSIVE ALUMNI
Steven Bridges
Pinar Uner Yilmaz
Brandon Alvendia
Felicia Mings
Allison Glenn
Ross Jordan
Anthony Stepter
La Keisha Leek
Sadie Woods
Yesomi Umolu
ICI’s 2016 Independent Vision Curatorial Award Nominees
Posted on August 25, 2016
Established in 2010 as an initiative of the Gerrit Lansing Education Fund, the Independent Vision Curatorial Award reflects ICI’s commitment to supporting international curators early in their careers who have shown exceptional creativity and prescience in their exhibition-making, research, and related writing. The award, including a $3,000 stipend towards a new project, is given every two years to an early or mid-career curator to support their independent practice through ICI, and give them a platform to pursue and publish their research online. The Independent Vision Curatorial Award is significant in that it is one of the very few awards in the world to recognize rising curatorial talent.
Past recipients of the award are Doryun Chong (2010), Chief Curator at M+, Hong Kong; Nav Haq (2012), recently appointed curator of the 2017 Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art, & Jay Sanders (2012), Curator and Curator of Performance at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York – both selected for the Award by Hans Ulrich Obrist; and Eva Barois De Caevel (2014), an independent curator who earlier this year collaborated on the 37th EVA International, Ireland Biennial of Contemporary Art, Limerick, selected by Nancy Spector.
This year we reached out to 12 international curators and ICI collaborators have each nominated one emerging or mid-career curator for the award. From these nominations, Franklin Sirmans, Director of the Pérez Art Museum Miami, will select and present this year’s award at the ICI Annual Benefit & Auction on October 26, 2016.
The 2016 Gerrit Lansing Independent Vision Curatorial Award Nominating Committee is comprised of: Omar Berrada, Writer, translator, and curator; Joselina Cruz, Director and Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD), De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde, Manila; Elvira Dyangani Ose, Lecturer in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, London, independent curator and member of the Thought Council at the Fondazione Prada; Ruth Estévez, Director & Curator, Gallery at REDCAT, Los Angeles; Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath, Independent curators and academics, Co-founders of the multidisciplinary curatorial platform Art Reoriented, Munich and New York; Julieta González, Chief Curator / Interim Director, Museo Jumex, Mexico and Adjunct Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP), Brazil; Susan Hapgood, Executive Director, International Studio & Curatorial Program, New York; Aileen Burns and Johan Lundh, Executive Co-Directors of the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane; Lucía Sanromán, Director of Visual Arts, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; Sally Tallant, Director, Liverpool Biennial; Emiliano Valdés, Chief Curator, Museum of Modern Art, Medellín; and Jochen Volz, Curator of the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo 2016, Brazil.
The 2016 Independent Vision Curatorial Award Nominees are:
• Amanda Abi Khalil: Independent curator and Founder, Temporary Art Platform; Beirut, Lebanon.
• Elisé Atangana: Independent curator and producer; Curator, Seven Hills, Kampala Art Biennale 2016, Uganda; Cameroon and France.
• Rashida Bumbray: Independent curator and choreographer; Senior Program Manager, the Arts Exchange, Open Society Foundations; New York, USA.
• Diana Campbell Betancourt: Chief Curator Dhaka Art Summit and Artistic Director, Samdani Art Foundation, Dhaka, Bangladesh; and Bellas Artes Project, Bagac; The Philippines.
• José Esparza Chong Cuy: Pamela Alper Associate Curator, MCA Chicago; Chicago, USA.
• Sabel Gavaldon: Independent curator; London, UK.
• Candice Hopkins: Independent curator and writer; Albuquerque, USA.
• Miguel A. Lopez: Chief Curator, TEOR/éTica; San José, Costa Rica; Co-founder, Bisagra, Lima, Perú.
• Camila Marambio: Independent curator; Tierra del Fuego, Chile.
• Louise O’Kelly: Founding Director, Block Universe Performance Art Festival; London, UK.
• Fatos Ustek: Independent curator and writer; London, UK.
• Vivian Ziherl: Curator, Jerusalem Show VII Before and After Origins (2016) and Founder, Frontier Imaginaries; Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Amanda Abi Khalil: Independent curator & Founder of Temporary Art Platform
Based in Beirut, Amanda Abi Khalil focuses her curatorial projects on socially engaged practices, public spaces and the contextual ways of making art and curating in Lebanon. Concerned with a sociological reading of the art scene in Beirut and interested in cultural policy, she has been particularly devoted to commissioning local artists to explore the possibilities of engaging social, aesthetical or political dialogues in different contexts that are on the margin of the art world.
Her practice as an exhibition-maker in and outside Lebanon tackles various themes including narrative and non-narrative practices in the MENA region, the moving image, anachronisms in image making, the white cube ideology of the gallery space while always critically rethinking the exhibition format through the methods she employs and the scenography. She also curates public interventions and artworks that aim to challenge the commonalities of public art.
Her most recent collective exhibitions include Kurz/Dust at the Center for Contemporary Arts Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, an international exhibition including artists whose works enter into interaction with their surrounding environment. The project comprised an exhibition, a series of site-specific commissions, artist residencies, an archive-auditorium and also a series of commissioned performances, discussions and film screenings. This organic structure was intended to initiate reflection and the experiencing of everyday coexistence with matter in different geopolitical contexts.
She is the founder of Temporary Art Platform, a curatorial platform that aims to shift artistic and curatorial discourse towards social and contextual concerns in Lebanon through residencies, research projects and commissions. Her most recent curatorial project with TAP was a series of twelve art interventions for four daily Lebanese newspapers that took place between April and June 2016.
Abi Khalil lectures in curating and sociology of arts at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts (ALBA) and at the Saint Joseph University (USJ) in Beirut and is an audience outreach consultant for the Association for the Promotion and the Exhibition of Arts in Lebanon.
Élise Atangana: Independent curator and producer; Curator, Seven Hills, Kampala Art Biennale 2016, Uganda
Élise Atangana situates her work between curating and exhibition production. From Cameroon and based in Paris, she envisions art as individual and collective practice.
At the end of 2015, she was in residence at Delfina Foundation in London in the context of their research project on “Public Domain”. This allowed her to further expand her research on the links between physical and virtual mobilities (movement, representation, practice), and consider their relation with contemporary art practice. How can space be activated by the physical and virtual movement of individuals? How is artistic practice influenced by these new mobilities? How does the relation to the body find an articulation with the modulation of the perception of space born out of virtuality, and what are the social and political implications?
In 2015, the exhibition Entry Prohibited to Foreigners, held at the Havremagasinet in Sweden, presented the work of 11 international artists, all of whom helped the audience put in perspective the diversity of mobilities today. Together with Abdelkader Damani and Smooth Ugochuckwu Nzewi, Elise Atangana was co-curator of Producing the Common, the international exhibition of the 11th Dakar Biennale in 2014. She has collaborated with curator Elvira Dyangani Ose on the Lumumbashi Biennale – Rencontres Picha 2012/2013, which was entitled Enthusiasm. In 2011, she became a founding member of the curatorial and research platform ‘On the Roof’, with Yves Chatap and Caroline Hancock, later joined by Vanessa Desclaux. Between 2004 and 2009, she worked with Simon Njami on several exhibition projects, including Check List Luanda Pop at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007, a selection of artists from Africa Remix in the 9th Havana Biennale in 2006, and the Camouflage Art Center in Brussels in 2005. Atangana was a jury member for the 6th Artes Mundi Prize (2014) and for the shortlist of Artes Mundi 7 (2015). She is a member of the acquisitions board of Nord-Pas de Calais Regional Fund of Contemporary Art and part of the Global Mobilities Futures Network (GMF).
Rashida Bumbray: Independent curator and choreographer; Senior Program Manager, the Arts Exchange, Open Society Foundations
In 2001, Bumbray began her curatorial career at The Studio Museum in Harlem, where she coordinated major exhibitions, including Energy Experimentation: African-American Artists 1964-1980 with Kellie Jones. As Associate Curator at The Kitchen, Bumbray organized critically acclaimed exhibitions and commissions by Leslie Hewitt, Simone Leigh, Adam Pendleton, Mai-Thu Perret and Elodie Pong, Mendi and Keith Obadike, Sanford Biggers, Marc Cary, Kyle Abraham, and Camille A. Brown, among many others. In 2014, Bumbray was a Facilitator for “A History of Contemporary Art in Dakar in Five Weeks” at Àsìkò 4th CCA, Lagos International ArtProgramme in Dakar. She was guest curator of Creative Time’s public art exhibition Funk, God, Jazz and Medicine: Black Radical Brooklyn (2014), which was named among Holland Cotter’s Notable Art Events of 2014 (New York Times). Bumbray served as Director of Artistic Affairs at Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, D.C from 2014-2015. She sits on the board of directors of Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls, and has been a consultant to the Surdna and Creative Capital foundations.
Bumbray is an accomplished choreographer. Her work has been presented by SummerStage, Harlem Stage, Caribbean Cultural Center, Project Row Houses, and Weeksville Heritage Center. She was nominated for the Bessie Award (New York Dance & Performance Awards) for Outstanding Emerging Choreographer in 2014. Bumbray’s Run Mary Run was on The New York Times’ list of Best Concerts for 2012 and featured in Jason Moran and Alicia Hall Moran’s BLEED at the 2012 Whitney Biennial.
A graduate of Oberlin College, Bumbray received an MA in Africana Studies from New York University.
Diana Campbell Betancourt: Artistic Director of Samdani Art Foundation, Dhaka and Bellas Artes Project, Bagac; Chief Curator Dhaka Art Summit, Dhaka
Over the past four years Betancourt has developed the Dhaka Art Summit to be the world’s leading research and exhibitions platform for art from South Asia, and developed a new philanthropic platform to shift the discourse away from an Indo-centric one by bringing together artists, architects, curators, and writers from across South Asia and through a largely commission based model where new work and exhibitions are born in Bangladesh. She has curated numerous solo projects with artists such as Haroon Mirza, Simryn Gill, Tino Sehgal, Lynda Benglis, Shilpa Gupta, Shahzia Sikander, Naeem Mohaiemen, Runa Islam, Shumon Ahmed, Pawel Althamer, Asim Waqif, and Raqs Media Collective as well as group exhibitions such as Rewind (with Amara Antilla, Sabih Ahmed, and Beth Citron) and Mining Warm Data, and initiated a free, alternative education program called Samdani Seminars which bridges the gaps in curriculum between the various art schools in Dhaka with international guest faculty. She chairs the board of the Mumbai Art Room, has been a research fellow at the Henry Moore Institute and the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, and has collaborated with sculpture parks including Yorkshire Sculpture Park, de Cordova, and Wanas Konst on new commissions of Indian sculpture.
Formerly based in Mumbai for six years, beyond furthering and facilitating inter-regional South Asia dialog through her exhibitions and public programs, Betancourt has a keen interest in inter-Asia dialogs and was a resident researcher at the Fukuoka Asian Art in 2016 and co-curated the Mumbai City Pavilion for the 9th Shanghai Biennial in 2012 and her studies at Princeton included a concentration in Chinese Language and Culture. She has consulted the New Museum and MCA Chicago and many other leading institutions on their inclusion of South Asia in their exhibitions programs and has presented her research as part of MoMA’s C-MAP initiative. She is co-editing a reader of the 2016 Dhaka Art Summit that will soon be released by Mousse publishing, and guest edited Take on Art’s Sculpture issue in 2013.
José Esparza Chong Cuy: Pamela Alper Associate Curator, MCA Chicago
José Esparza Chong Cuy works as a curator but was trained as an architect. His approach to curatorial practice is deeply informed by the built environment—a site he thinks of as the most complex exhibition, where desires are showcased individually but perform collectively as a system. He makes sense of culture through the cities that communities inhabit: from the rational gridded cities of New York or Chicago, to the chaotic organization of Mexico City or Sao Paulo. Context is important for him.
He was recently appointed the Pamela Alper Associate Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and is currently researching the history of the New Bauhaus, an experimental pedagogical project that found in Chicago a fertile ground where modernist ideas and ideals took new forms. Prior to his arrival to the MCA Chicago, Esparza was Associate Curator and head of Research and Public Programs at the Museo Jumex in Mexico City, where amongst other projects he launched an large-scale performance program presenting the work of Pedro Reyes and Alexandra Bachzetsis, as well as a series of ongoing exhibitions titled Pasajeros (Passengers), which study the passing of important, yet overlooked, artistic figures through Mexico who left a deep imprint in the local artistic community. Polish experimental theater director Jerzy Grotowski, who was following a similar path to that of Antonin Artaud in the Sierra Tarahumara, inaugurated the series. Los Angeles-based architecture critic Esther McCoy, who spent time in Cuernavaca and befriended the influential yet under recognized designer Clara Porset, will be next.
In addition to working for cultural institutions, he also maintains an active independent curatorial practice and is currently developing a public art project titled Mexico 68 that looks into the residual infrastructure of the infamous 1968 Olympics that took place in Mexico City with the support of the Graham Foundation. Participants include Jill Magid, Jorge Otero Pailos, Tania Pérez Córdova, and Francesco Pedraglio.
Sabel Gavaldon: Independent curator
Sabel Gavaldon makes exhibitions, writes and thinks through artworks. His last exhibition took place in a derelict factory in the outskirts of Barcelona, and playfully employed fiction to place the viewer before the remains of an unknown material culture, reminiscent of those prehistoric monuments that Robert Smithson once described in a tour of his suburban hometown of Passaic. Collapsing past, present, and future, the exhibition invited the audience to consider vast geological timescales as well as microscopic life forms whose scale of experience is unimaginable to the human mind.
Gavaldon is interested in the material and semiotic contingencies of the exhibition format. He approaches curating as a practice that resists specialization and makes it possible to articulate disparate perspectives, bodies of knowledge and registers of experience, multiplying our universe through the worlds of others.
In 2013, he initiated A Museum of Gesture, an ongoing project that explores gesture as a form of resistance, looking at the performative strategies and expressive codes invented by minorities and subordinate groups. Working from an understanding of the body as a living political archive, the project excavates just a handful of these minor histories, by engaging with phenomena such as the House and Ballroom culture in NYC. More recently, this research has extended into a new project with curator Manuel Segade, which invokes the real and imagined legacies of black radical performance. The upcoming exhibition will take place in the autumn of 2017 at Centro de Arte 2 de Mayo, Madrid.
Gavaldon writes texts and delivers talks encompassing topics that range from squid language to psychedelics, from Zeno’s paradoxes to the physics of cartoons, and from cheese making to the manifold ways in which our life is entangled with the biocultural histories of other species living among us. His talks have been hosted by organisations including the Camden Arts Centre, Chisenhale Gallery, Architectural Association, Cittadellarte–Fondazione Pistoletto, Lugar a Dudas, and Tenderpixel.
Gavaldon was born in Barcelona, and currently lives in London.
Candice Hopkins: Independent Curator and writer
Candice Hopkins, a citizen of Carcross/Tagish First Nation in Yukon, Canada, is an independent curator and writer now based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. At present she is Curatorial Advisor for documenta 14, which will open in Athens, Greece and Kassel, Germany in 2017. Her writings on history, Indigenous art, and vernacular architecture have been published by MIT Press, BlackDog Publishing, Revolver Press, New York University, The Fillip Review, Canadian Art Magazine and the National Museum of the American Indian, among others. Recent essays and presentations include “Outlawed Social Life” for the documenta 14 edited South as a State of Mind and Sounding the Margins: A Choir of Minor Voices at Small Projects, Tromsø, Norway. She has lectured widely including at the Witte de With, Tate Modern, Dak’Art Biennale, Artists Space, Tate Britain and the University of British Columbia. In 2012 she presented a keynote lecture on the topic of the “sovereign imagination” for dOCUMENTA(13) together with Hetti Perkins. Hopkins is presently engaged as a researcher with Dr. Dylan Robinson on the multi-year project, Sensate Sovereignties on Indigenous sound and public art practices.
Hopkins’ collaborative curatorial projects include Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art, the National Gallery of Canada’s largest survey of recent Indigenous art, co-curated with Greg Hill and Christine Lalonde and Close Encounters: The Next 500 Years, a multi-venue exhibition in Winnipeg, Canada on Indigenous futurisms co-curated with Steven Loft, Lee-Ann Martin and Jenny Western. While at Western Front she organized the exhibitions Before the Internet: Networks and Art (with Peter Courtmanche); The F Word (on feminism) with Alissa Firth-Eagland; Kits for an Encounter (with Marisa Jahn); Jimmie Durham: Knew Urk (with Robert Blackson), as well as the first solo exhibition of Paul Chan in Canada. In 2014 she was part of the curatorial team of the SITE Santa Fe biennial, Unsettled Landscapes, together with Lucía Sanromán, Irene Hoffman, and Janet Dees, and returned in 2016 as Managing Curator of SITElines.2016 biennial, much wider than a line. In 2015 she received the prestigious Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art.
Miguel A. Lopez: Chief Curator, TEOR/éTica (San José, Costa Rica); Co-founder, Bisagra (Lima, Perú)
Miguel A. López is a writer, researcher, and Chief Curator of TEOR/éTica in San Jose, Costa Rica. His work investigates collaborative dynamics and transformations in the understanding of and engagement with politics in Latin America in recent decades. His work also focuses on feminist and queer re-articulations of history from a Southern perspective. He is a founding member of the Red Conceptualismos del Sur, an international platform active since 2007 that seeks different possibilities in writing, archiving, thinking, positioning, exhibiting and politically historicizing the artistic-political practices that have taken place in Latin America since 1960s.
Recent curatorial projects include: A Kingdom of Hours (co-curated with Robert Leckie) at Gasworks, London (2016); TeresaBurga. Structures of Air (co-curated with Agustín Perez Rubio) at MALBA, Buenos Aires (2015); the section ‘God is Queer’ for the 31 Bienal de São Paulo (2014); A Wandering Body. Sergio Zevallos and the Grupo Chaclacayo, 1982-1994 at the Lima Art Museum (2013) and Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart (2014); and Losing Human Form. Aseismic image of the 1980s in Latin America (co-curated with Red Conceptualismos del Sur) at the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid, Lima Art Museum, and MUNTREF in Buenos Aires (2012-2014).
Since 2012 he has been part of the curatorial team of Contemporary Art Acquisitions Committee at the Lima Art Museum. He is a founding member of Bisagra, a contemporary art platform active since 2014 in Lima, which is focused on developing experimental public programs and other formats for exhibition making.
Camila Marambio: Independent curator
Camila Marambio is director of Ensayos, a nomadic research program that focuses on ecological issues in Tierra del Fuego through experimental interdisiciplinary practices. She founded the program in 2010 in order to integrate artists and humanities scholars into the existing scientific research teams in the region, working in partnership with Wildlife Conservation Society’s Karukinka Natural Park. Ensayos considers Tierra del Fuego and its climate and cultural concerns as a laboratory where issues of global importance are considered at a hyper-local level. Work from Ensayos has been represented in exhibitions and performances at the Kadist Art Foundation, Paris; the Institute for Art and Olfaction, Los Angeles; BHQFU, New York; Puerto de Ideas, Valparaíso; Festival Cielos del Infinito, Puerto Williams, CL; Kurant, Tromsø, NO; and Psi #22, Melbourne, AU.
Marambio received an M.A. in Modern Art: Critical Studies at Columbia University and a Master of Experiments in Art and Politics at Science Po in Paris; attended the Curatorial Programme at de Appel Arts Center in Amsterdam; and has been curator-in-residence at the Kadist Art Foundation in Paris and Gertrude Contemporary in Australia. She was Chief Curator at Matucana 100 in Santiago, and previously Assistant Curator at Exit Art in New York City. Currently she resides in Melbourne, Australia were she is a PhD Candidate in Curatorial Practice at MADA.
Louise O’Kelly: Founding Director of Block Universe, Performance Art Festival, London
Louise O’Kelly is an independent curator and arts professional based in London. In 2015 she founded Block Universe, London’s first performance art festival that takes place across major institutions and unique off-site spaces throughout the city annually.
Through Block Universe, O’Kelly curates a program of performances that cross boundaries between visual arts, music and dance, creating a high-profile platform to raise the visibility of a new generation of artists. Operating under a single curatorial vision, O’Kelly explores a series of interlinking themes with each edition of the festival, commissioning and producing works by UK-based and international artists. June 2017 will bring the third edition of the festival.
Previous projects have focused on performance and the live encounter, manifesting mostly as one-off collaborative, multidisciplinary events in partnership with institutions, artist-run spaces and collectives. Underlining her curatorial practice is a keen interest in the relationship of cultural and embodied memory in performance, and the role of choreography and dance in the visual arts. This research furthers a line of inquiry that began with the opportunity to work with a number of historic artists estates working with performance and participation such as Lygia Clark, Ana Mendieta, and Hannah Wilke amongst others and continued in postgraduate studies. O’Kelly holds a MA in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths College, London.
O’Kelly regularly speaks on panels in relation to performance and co-hosts an ongoing talk series on contemporary art for the Soho House Group. O’Kelly is also Artforum’s Representative for the United Kingdom and Ireland.
Fatos Ustek: Independent curator & writer
Based in London, Fatos Ustek was recently appointed curator of Art Night 2017, with artistic direction of Whitechapel Gallery in association with Unlimited Productions. She is currently editing the fig-2 publication, that commemorates 50 projects in 50 consecutive weeks that she curated in 2015 at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. Formerly, Ustek acted as associate curator for the 10th Gwangju Biennial, South Korea. Forthcoming, she will guest lecture on contemporary curating practices at the Estonian Contemporary Art Development Centre in Tallinn, and speak at the 5th para-curatorial seminar series at the Times Museum in Guangzhou; as well as jury for the sculpture section at the 2017 Arte Laguna Art Prize, Venice. Ustek is on the Block Universe Advisory Board; member of AICA UK, an ICI Alumni, and part of the Curators Network. Other curated projects include an opera in five acts at DRAF, London as well as an exhibition trilogy entitled Now Expanded that took place at Kunstfabrik, Berlin; Tent, Rotterdam and DRAF, London.
She contributes regularly to international art magazines and have edited and authored numerous publications and exhibition catalogues. Acting as a founding editor of Nowiswere Contemporary Art Magazine between 2008-2012, Ustek was also the editor of Unexpected Encounters Situations of Contemporary Art and Architecture (Turkish Only, 2012; English Only, upcoming) published by Zorlu Centre, Istanbul. She is also the author of Book of Confusions, 2012, published by Rossi&Rossi, London.
In 2008, Ustek received her M.A. at the Contemporary Art Theory Department at Goldsmiths College London. She also holds a BA in Mathematics from Bogazici University, Istanbul, where she additionally completed a degree in Film Studies.
Vivian Ziherl: Curator, Jerusalem Show VIII Before and After Origins; Founder, Frontier Imaginaries; PIR researcher, If I Can’t Dance I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution; Co-founder, Landings art and research platform with Natasha Ginwala; Graduate, de Appel Curatorial Programme.
Raised in Brisbane, Australia and working from Amsterdam, Netherlands, in 2015 Vivian Ziherl established the roving art and research platform Frontier Imaginaries, with the support of the Institute of Modern Art Curatorial Fellowship. The project launched in 2016 across both the Institute of Modern Art and QUT Art Museum in Brisbane, and with a satellite presentation at the Australian Cinémathèque. Its second edition occurs under the guise of Jerusalem Show VIII, on the invitation of Al Ma’mal Foundation for Contemporary Art and as part of the 3rd Qalandiya International. A future edition will take place in collaboration with the Van Abbemuseum in 2018.
At base Frontier Imaginaries is an experiment. It explores a new form of para-institution in the arts; one that responds to both the new possibilities for connection, and the rising states of isolation that mark the global era. Its driving task is to work trans-locally in order to map the ongoing significance of the frontier formation, and in so doing to challenge its grip.
Frontier Imaginaries is interested in a kind of curatorial ‘realpolitik’. It is less interested in a play of signifiers within a supposedly neutral space than in what cultural resources are to hand (funds, status, accessibility, mobility, visibility) and of what is to be done with them. The project learns form 1980s and ‘90s art debates in Australia over ‘appropriation’ and the misguided or wrong-minded effort to insert Aboriginal art into a Western cannon through visual cues alone. As aesthetic work, Frontier Imaginaries explores a notion of frontier formalism. It approaches form in a sense that resolutely encompasses socio-economic and historically located constellations.
Join us and meet the winner at the 2016 Annual Benefit & Auction on Wednesday, October 26, 2016. To stay updated on this event or for ticket inquiries contact Jenn Hyland at [email protected].
Photos from the Event: Un | Fixed Homeland
Posted on August 30, 2016
ICI Partners with Liverpool Biennial Associate Artists Programme
Posted on August 31, 2016
The Liverpool Biennial Associate Artists Programme is a three-year partnership led by the Biennial, in partnership with ICI and CACTUS gallery in Liverpool. The program offers 10 artists based in the North of England an international framework for artistic development and support.
As part of this three-year program (2016-18), each Associate Artist is paired with a curator selected from ICI’s network of Curatorial Intensive alumni, who will serve as mentors.
Read more about the program HERE.