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INDEPENDENT CURATORS INTERNATIONAL
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Susan Sollins – In Memoriam

Posted on October 20, 2014

We mourn the untimely death of Susan Sollins on October 13, 2014.  We join all who knew her to celebrate her creativity, leadership, and pioneering achievements in the arts. With prescient vision and a unique understanding of the fundamental role of curators, Susan founded ICI with Nina Castelli Sundell in 1975, heralding an unprecedented commitment to support contemporary art by connecting curators, artists, and art spaces across a global world of art. As Executive Director of ICI from 1975 to 1996, and Founder and Executive Director of Art21 since 1997, she was driven by a sense of civic purpose, steadfast in her belief in the power of art and artists to inspire millions. She will continue to inspire us every day.

Eva Barois De Caevel Announcement in ARTnews

Posted on October 29, 2014

“Independent Curators International announced today that Eva Barois de Caevel, the assistant curator of Raw Materials in Dakar, Senegal, and cofounder of Cartel de Kunst, “an international collective of emerging curators,” has been named the 2014 winner of its International Vision Curator Award, which supports “international curators early in their careers who have shown exceptional creativity and prescience in their exhibition-making, research, and related writing.”

The prize, which comes with a $3,000 stipend toward a new project, is given every other year. Nancy Spector, the Guggenheim’s deputy director and chief curator, served as the juror this year.”

Read the full article here.

ArtInfo Announces Eva Barois De Caevel

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“On behalf of Independent Curator’s International (ICI), Nancy Spector, deputy director and chief curator of the Guggenheim Foundation, has made her choice for winner of the Independent Vision Curator Award: Eva Barois de Caevel, a Paris-based independent curator, assistant curator of Raw Materials in Dakar, and co-founder of Cartel de Kunst, an international emerging-curator collective. “Eva Barois de Caevel’s unflinching curatorial practice tackles some of today’s most urgent issues, including sexuality and human rights, in a postcolonial world,” Spector explained in a press release. The award, which includes a $3,000 stipend, will be presented to Caevel on November 17 at ICI’s annual benefit auction.”

Read the full article here.

New York Observer on Eva Barois De Caevel

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“Eva Barois De Caevel has been named the recipient of Independent Curators International’s 2014 Independent Vision Curatorial Award. The biannual award is given each year to an emerging international curator who shows promise in their exhibition making. Ms. De Caevel was selected by deputy director and chief curator of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation Nancy Spector, who will present the award to her at the ICI’s Annual Benefit and Auction on November 17. Chosen from a shortlist of 15, she will receive a $3,000 stipend for a new project.”

Read the full article here.

“Eva Barois De Caevel Wins 2014 Independent Vision Award” in Artforum

Posted on October 30, 2014

“Eva Barois de Caevel has been named winner of the 2014 Independent Vision Curator Award, awarded by Independent Curators International. She is currently assistant curator of Raw Materials in Dakar and cofounder of Cartel de Kunst.”

Read the full article here.

artnet on Dimitris Daskalopoulos, recipient of ICI’s 2014 Leo Award

Posted on November 25, 2014

Download the full article here.

Dimitris Daskalopoulos interviewed by Huffington Post

ICI’s Annual Benefit & Auction in Whitewall Magazine

Anthony Haden-Guest covers ICI Benefit for NY Observer

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Anthony Haden-Guest cover’s ICI’s Annual Benefit & Auction for the New York Observer. Download the full article here.

Eva Barois De Caevel interviewed for Complex

Posted on January 10, 2015

Leigh Silver interviews 2014 Independent Vision Award recipient Eva Barois De Caevel for Complex magazine.

Read the full interview here.

Promoting Collaboration

Posted on March 2, 2015

Team Spirit
Team Spirit
Sollins, Susan and Nina Castelli Sundell. Team Spirit. Independent Curators International (ICI), New York, 1990. 84 pages. 9 x 11.5 in.. Cover (top) and interior cover page (bottom).

ICI was founded in 1975 by two art world pioneers, Susan Sollins and Nina Castelli Sundell,  who together defined the vision behind one of the first organizations in the world to be dedicated to curators. Their work together shaped their understanding of how an international network of curators, artists, and art spaces could emerge through collaboration. In 1990, they co-curated the ICI exhibition Team Spirit, which reflected on their own history of working together and focused on “the growing phenomenon of collaborative art.” At the cusp of a new era of collaborative practice ushered in by Colab, the Guerrilla Girls, Gran Fury, and others, the exhibition drew a genealogy of international collaborations as a mode of production going back to the mid-1960’s, including, Equipo Cronica, General Idea, Gilbert & George, and Komar & Melamid, creating a foundation of and imperative towards collaboration that continues to this day.

Collaboration remains at the core of ICI’s approach to supporting curators and creating access to contemporary art and discourse for broad audiences. As they travel to art spaces internationally, many ICI exhibitions are the basis of collaborations with the hosting venues and curators that generate new content, even new publications, and new experiences with local audiences in mind.

ICI’s training and research programs for curators also rely on the power of working together, sharing knowledge, and learning from one another. The Curatorial Intensive is the first-ever professional development and training program to build a growing, active network of peers for continued learning among curators. Each Intensive held outside of New York City is developed by ICI with a partner institution, around ideas selected by both for their relevance to the local, regional and international contexts. Even ICI’s Research Fellowships allow curators to conduct the research that is critical to their practice in conversation with ICI staff, and with access to ICI’s international network of collaborators.

 

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Energizing curatorial networks, and fostering professional development around the world

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Addis Ababa
Participants of the Curatorial Intensive in Addis Ababa. May 13–19, 2014.

Recognizing the critical issues faced by emerging curators working in different contexts across the U.S. and around the world – including cost, time, and access to resources – ICI developed the Curatorial Intensive in 2010 as a weeklong, low-cost program that can take place in collaboration with art organizations around the world. As with many ICI exhibitions, the program is adapted to each local partnership, promoting a better understanding of the local context.

And just like ICI’s first exhibition catalogue in 1975 was published in Spanish and Portuguese, translation remains a critical consideration at ICI, as a way to address issues of access in the curatorial field. Since 2013, the Curatorial Intensive has been organized in 3 cities in Latin America, where it was conducted entirely in Spanish. The upcoming Intensive in Marrakech, Morocco, will be conducted in English, but also in Arabic and French, following a new model developed with our partners, Dar al-Ma’mûn, an art space whose activities include education and translation programs. In addition, key curatorial resources will be translated into French and Arabic for the first time on occasion of the program.

International iterations of ICI’s programs and the Curatorial Intensive in particular have also shown broaden access to emerging curators, as ICI recognizes opportunities are still often curtailed by borders, visas, and other political and economic factors.

Curatorial Intensive in Bogotá

Participants of the Curatorial Intensive in Bogotá. November 24–30, 2013.

Curatorial Intensive in Buenos Aires

Participants of the Curatorial Intensive in Buenos Aires. August 18–24, 2013.
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ENCOURAGING INDEPENDENT PRACTICE

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Martha Wilson

Martha Wilson, Martha Wilson as Barbara Bush, March 11, 1991. Courtesy of the artist.

Over the past 40 years, ICI has built an unparalleled network of collaborators that includes curators, artists, and art spaces of all sizes, with the goal to support independent practice locally, and encourage the sharing of independent thought across the globe. This has been true since day one, and ICI today continues to build upon this rich history of supporting independent projects.

Exemplifying this support is ICI’s current collaboration with Martha Wilson, which has roots in the late 1970s. Martha Wilson – an evolving retrospective of the artist’s work – and the Martha Wilson Sourcebook: 40 Years of Reconsidering Performance, Feminism, Alternative Spaces, continue ICI’s partnerships with the artist. Just three years after ICI was established, and at the same time as Wilson founded the alternative space Franklin Furnace, ICI produced Artists’ Books U.S.A, a unique survey exhibition of artists’ publications, co-curated by Wilson and Peter Frank. The show included well over a hundred examples of book art – showing a broad range of attitudes towards publishing, from ad-hoc to ephemeral, experimental to activist. From 1978 to 1980, it expanded the often informal distribution of these publications, reaching broad audiences in art spaces across North America. ICI has remained committed to supporting independent publishing as an artistic and curatorial practice, and regularly organizes panel discussions, events, and book launches, both at its Curatorial Hub and beyond.


Artists' Books U.S.A. Acconci Andersen

From the Artists’ Books U.S.A. catalogue, 1975.

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Supporting curators and curatorial research

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Pablo León de la Barra: Report from Central America presentation at the ICI Curatorial Hub on March 4, 2014.

Rosina Cazali Curator’s Perspective: Rosina Cazali at the New Museum on March 17, 2012.

Since 2009, ICI’s public programs and research initiatives have raised public awareness of the curatorial role and encouraged meaningful exchange in the field. Many programs have overlapped in their scope, allowing for sustained attention to be paid to specific areas of research from various perspectives. For example, in 2012 Rosina Cazali presented on her practice and the Guatemalan art scene, as part of the Curator’s Perspective talk series in New York. Her presentation introduced many to the art practice and curatorial developments in her country, and led ICI to connect with one of the most active art spaces there: Proyectos Ultravioleta.

Cazali’s talk also served as a basis from which to understand further research into the Guatemalan art scene, including that of Pablo León de la Barra, who in 2013-14 was the Guggenheim UBS MAP Curator for Latin America. Before conducting research into the region for the Guggenheim, de la Barra spent time in Central America as the first recipient of the ICI/Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (CPPC) Travel Award for Central America and the Caribbean. He reported on his research, including the impact the thriving Guatemalan scene had on him, at a public talk in the ICI Curatorial Hub in 2014.


Guatemala

2013 Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (CPPC) Travel Award for Central America and the Caribbean recipient Remco de Blaaij image from his research trip to Guatemala. | Pablo José Ramirez: To Think the Impossible in the ICI Curatorial Hub on September 4, 2014. | Federico Herrero exhibition, NuMu, Guatemala City, July 2014. | Photo Credit: Remco de Blaaij.

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Generating new content, and new publications

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VIDEOART U.S.A.

Boulton, Jack, & David A. Ross. VIDEO ART USA: XIII BIENAL DE SAO PAULO, OCTUBRE–DICIEMBRE DE 1975. Exh. cat. Philadelphia: Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, 1975.


As they travel to art spaces around the globe, ICI exhibitions are adapted by the presenting venues and curators to generate new content, and new experiences with local audiences in mind. An example of this is the number of publications that have been produced over the years by the presenting venues. Each publication expands the reach of the exhibition, and promotes new ideas, responses, and translations prompted by the show.

While ICI has produced catalogues in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Chinese, art spaces presenting ICI exhibitions around the world have also produced publications in various languages to accompany and expand the curatorial projects such as FAXdo itLiving as Form (the Nomadic Version), and others.


Living As Form (Nomadic Version)

Korean and English versions: Kim, Jinjoo. Living As Form. Exh. cat. Anyang: The 4th Anyang Public Art Project: Park Library, 2013. | Akiba, Michiko, et al. Living As Form (The Nomadic Version): 20 Years of Socially Engaged Art. Exh. cat. Tokyo: Nonprofit Organization Art & Society Research Center, 2014. | Ivanova, Nevena, & Mandy Wong. Living As Form: 14 Activist Art Projects from Hong Kong and more from Videotage Media Art Collection (VMAC). Exh. cat. Hong Kong: Videotage, 2012. | Artport: Tel Aviv. Living As Form (The Nomadic Version): Socially Engaged Art In the Last 20 Years. Exh. cat. Tel Aviv: Artport, 2014.


FAX

Ribas, João. FAX. Exh. cat. New York: The Drawing Center and Independent Curators International (ICI), 2009. | Abbas, Nadim, & Álvaro Rodríguez Fominaya. FAX: The Hong Kong Works. Exh. cat. Hong Kong: Para/Site Art Space, 2010.


Power of the Word Power of the Word

Chang, Tsong-zung. Power of the Word. Exh. cat. New York: Independent Curators International (ICI), 2001. | Chang, Tsong-zung. Power of the Word. Exh. cat. Taiwan: Taiwan Museum of Art, 1999.

Help us celebrate 40 Years of ICI by giving back. Click here to make a fully tax-deductible donation.

SPOTLIGHT: INDEPENDENT VISION CURATORIAL AWARD

Posted on March 10, 2015

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 is given every two years to an early or mid-career curator to support their independent practice through ICI, and gives 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.

2014 Recipient: Eva Barois De Caevel

Eva Barois De Caevel received the Independent Vision Curatorial Award in 2014. Barois De Caevel was selected by Nancy Spector, Deputy Director and Jennifer and David Stockman Chief Curator of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. “Eva Barois De Caevel’s unflinching curatorial practice tackles some of today’s most urgent issues, including sexuality and human rights, in a postcolonial world. Working collaboratively to encourage dialogue and participation among her audiences, with issues both local and global, she is courageously expanding the curatorial field.” –Nancy Spector Eva Barois De Caevel is assistant curator at Raw Material Company, Dakar, and works as an independent curator. She graduated from the Université de Paris-Sorbonne Paris IV in Contemporary Art History in 2011 and in Curatorial Training in 2012, with her research focusing primarily on moving images. She has been working concurrently on academic research as well as on postcolonial questions and socially engaged practices in contemporary art, and on their interaction: how socially engaged practices in contemporary art can become think tanks on postcolonial issues. Barois De Caevel completed a curatorial residency at Raw Material Company – centre for art, knowledge and society, Dakar, which consisted of conceiving a yearlong program (January 2014 to January 2015) on sexual liberties in Africa through contemporary African art. She curated the first event of the program: Who Said It Was Simple. The exhibition included screenings, debates, a performance, and a seminar. She continued her collaboration with director Koyo Kouoh, working with her on several projects, such as Body Talk – Feminism, Sexuality and the Body in the Work of African Women Artists (to be held at WIELS, Brussels, in February 2015), and Streamlines, a project that makes the oceans the metaphorical focal point for an international group exhibition which will examine the cultural repercussion of the global stream of goods and trade between the South and the North (to be held at Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, in October 2015). Her next projects will focus on ways of displaying colonial legacies and contemporary imperialisms in vernacular and daily elements (sexuality, language, body image, garments, food, etc.) as well as through art forms and specific curatorial tools. She was part of the first TURN Meeting On Perspectives, Facts and Fictions (June 26-28, 2014, Berlin), a project of Kulturstifung Des Bundes, Germany. The TURN fund was established in 2012 with the purpose of promoting artistic exchange and cooperation between German and African artists and institutions. She is co-founder of Cartel de Kunst, an international collective and solidarity network of emerging curators based in Paris. Read an interview between Barois De Caevel and María Del Carmen Carrión, ICI’s Director of Public Programs, here.

Nav Haq & Jay Sanders

2012 Recipients: Nav Haq & Jay Sanders

In 2012, Hans Ulrich Obrist selected Nav Haq and Jay Sanders to jointly receive the Independent Vision Curatorial Award. “Each curator is establishing a unique voice, developing their practice by initiating projects independently, as well as having worked in a diverse range of institutions. Nav Haq frequently takes us into the polyphony of art centers, creating shows and projects that broaden the scope of our thinking. Jay Sanders stays close to artists, gaining a strong understanding of an artist’s body of work—both emerging and overlooked—so that ultimately audiences can know an artist deeper.” —Hans Ulrich Obrist, October, 2012 Nav Haq has been Curator at MuHKA, Antwerp, since April 2012. From 2007–2012 he was Exhibitions Curator at Arnolfini, Bristol, and from 2004–2007 he was Curator at Gasworks, London. Haq was previously also a guest editor at Book Works, London, developing a series of artist’s books with the artists Rosalind Nashashibi and Olivia Plender. In 2011, he was a selection committee member for the British Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale. Also in 2011, he curated the inaugural MARKER section at Art Dubai, inviting experimental art organizations from across Asia and the Middle East to develop special projects for the context of the fair. Haq has also contributed to numerous periodicals including Frieze, Kaleidoscope and Yishu Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, among others. Haq has curated many solo projects with artists such as Hassan Khan, Cosima von Bonin, Shilpa Gupta, Janek Simon, Katleen Vermeir & Ronny Heiremans, Imogen Stidworthy and Kerry Tribe. Group exhibitions have included Superpower: Africa in Science Fiction, co-curated with Al Cameron (2012); Museum Show – a major historical survey of (semi-fictional) museums created by artists (2011); Magical Consciousness, co-curated with artist Runa Islam (2011); the two-person exhibition The Sea Wall presenting works by Haegue Yang and Felix Gonzalez-Torres (2011); Lapdogs of the Bourgeoisie: Class Hegemony in Contemporary Art, co-curated with Tirdad Zolghadr (2006-09); and Contour Biennial 2007, Mechelen, Belgium. In collaboration with Bassam El Baroni and Jeremy Beaudry, he initiated the online project The ARPANET Dialogues. Jay Sanders is currently the Curator & Curator of Performance at The Whitney Museum of American Art. Prior to this he was Gallery Director at Greene Naftali in New York from 2005–2010 and Gallery Director at Marianne Boesky from 2000–2005. Recent curatorial projects include the 76th Whitney Biennial, co-curated with Elisabeth Sussman (2012); NUMINA Lente, a three-evening music and performance festival, Clemente Soto Velez Center, New York (April 2011); Looking Back: The Third White Columns Annual, White Columns, New York (2008); Change our fates, hobble the plague, start with time, co-curated with Paul Chan, Lyon Biennale (2007). Sanders has worked closely with a number of artists including Tony Conrad, Bernadette Corporation, John Knight, Gelitin and the Estate of Paul Sharits to develop new projects. He has also programmed performance, music, and film exhibitions at such venues as the former Whitney branch at Altria, Issue Project Room, Anthology Film Archives, Sculpture Center, EAI, The Stone, Tonic, and for Performa. He is a member of the collaborative performance group Grand Openings, and has staged large-scale events at MoMA, the Bumbershoot Festival (Seattle), MUMOK (Vienna), the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial (Japan), and Anthology Film Archives for Performa ’05 (New York).

Doryun Chong

2010 Recipient: Doryun Chong

In 2010, Doryun Chong was selected to receive the Independent Vision Curatorial Award. At the time, Chong was the Associate Curator of Painting and Sculpture at MoMA. He is currently the Chief Curator of M+ Hong Kong. Chong was selected to receive the Independent Vision Curatorial Award for the recent exhibitions he has curated and co-curated in a range of venues nationally and internationally, including Bruce Nauman: Days (MoMA, 2010); Brinkmanship: Park Chan-Kyong and Sean Snyder (REDCAT, 2010) with Clara Kim; Haegue Yang: Integrity of the Insider (Walker Art Center, 2009–10); Tetsumi Kudo: Garden of Metamorphosis (Walker Art Center, 2008–9); Brave New Worlds (Walker Art Center, 2007) with Yasmil Raymond; and the 2006 Busan Biennial. Through these exhibitions Chong has not only demonstrated multiple, global understandings of artworks and their contexts, but also an unusual eloquence in the possibilities of display and discourse. Chong’s innovative research skills draw on several Asian and Romance languages and his training in Western European and East Asian philosophy and art history. Considered the top translator of writing on contemporary art from Korea, Chong is also responsible for the groundbreaking lexicon on artist Huang Yong Ping’s complex web of meanings, intentions, history, conflict, and culture. Read an interview with Chong and ICI’s Director-at-Large Kate Fowle here.

Recipients of the 2015 CPPC Travel Award for Central America and the Caribbean

Posted on June 29, 2015

The Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (CPPC) and Independent Curators International (ICI) announce André Eugène and Leah Gordon as the recipients of the 2015 CPPC Travel Award for Central America and the Caribbean.

André Eugène and Leah Gordon have been selected as the fourth recipients of the CPPC Travel Award for Central America and the Caribbean. The award supports a contemporary art curator based anywhere in the world to travel to regions in Central America and the Caribbean to conduct research related to art and cultural activities, generating new collaborations with artists, curators, museums, and cultural centers within regional networks.

Working collaboratively, Eugène and Gordon will use the award to travel together to the Dominican Republic and Trinidad & Tobago to research regional models of artists’ self-organization, alternative strategies of community education, and discover new exhibition networks for Haitian artists.

André Eugène (Haiti) is an artist and founding member of the artists collective: Atis Rezistans, and a broader movement known as the Sculptors of Grand Rue. In 2006 Andre Eugène contributed to a large-scale collective sculptural work, which is a permanent exhibit at the International Museum of Slavery in Liverpool. His work has been shown at the Muesum of Ethnography, Geneva; at the Parc de la Villette, Paris; the Fowler Museum, UCLA, Los Angeles; Nottingham Contemporary, UK and at the Grand Palais, Paris. His work was included in the Haitian Pavillion at the 54th Venice Biennale. Andre Eugène is the co-director of the Ghetto Biennale, which has been held in Port-au-Prince since 2009.

Leah Gordon (UK) is an artist and curator making work on Modernism and religion; anthropology and post-colonialism; slavery and industrialisation; and class and folk history. Gordon’s film and photographic work has been exhibited internationally including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; the Dak’art Biennale; the National Portrait Gallery, UK; Parc de la Villette, Paris and NSU Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale. Her photography book Kanaval: Vodou, Politics and Revolution on the Streets of Haiti was published in June 2010. She is the co-director of the Ghetto Biennale in Port-au-Prince, Haiti; was a curator for the Haitian Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale; was the co-curator of Kafou: Haiti, History & Art, at the Nottingham Contemporary; on the curatorial team for In Extremis: Death and Life in 21st Century Haitian Art at the Fowler Museum, UCLA and will be the guest curator for the 2015 Paris Outsider Art Fair.

André Eugène and Leah Gordon‘s proposal was selected from 77 applications from 29 different countries. The selection was made by a jury of professionals, which included Pablo Guardiola (Co-Director of Beta-Local, San Juan, Puerto Rico), Catalina Lozano (independent curator, Mexico City, Mexico), and María del Carmen Carrión (Director of Public Programs & Research, ICI). In their selection, the jury considered the immediate and the long-term benefits and impact of each proposal for the places, institutions and artists visited, as well as projects that favor new understandings and readings of the artistic production of the region.

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ABOUT THE COLECCIÓN PATRICIA PHELPS DE CISNEROS
The Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (CPPC) works to increase understanding and awareness of Latin America’s contributions to the history of art and ideas, and to support innovation, education, creativity, and research in the field of Latin American art. Through grants and partnerships, the CPPC also supports the professional development of Latin American artists, curators, and scholars. Recent initiatives include, among others, a sponsorship to create a Curatorial Fellowship at dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel, Germany; a partnership with Hunter College (New York) to create the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Professor of Latin American Art; and a grant for a Venezuelan artist to assist to the residency program Soma SUMMER in Mexico City.

http://www.coleccioncisneros.org
Twitter: @CPPCisneros
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cisneroscollection

ABOUT ICI
Independent Curators International (ICI) produces exhibitions, events, training opportunities, research initiatives, and publications for curators and audiences around the world. Established in 1975, ICI is headquartered in New York, but active around the world. ICI’s programs are presented and often developed in partnership with art institutions across the globe, therefore encouraging new infrastructures for art practice internationally, and inspiring fresh ways of seeing and contextualizing contemporary art.

#BECA2015CPPC UPDATE: JANUARY 2016
Leah Gordon and Andre Eugene have written detailed travelogues from their research trips in the DR and Trinidad. the DR and Trinidad.

Read the full text on the DR HERE.
Read the full text on Trinidad HERE.

Listen to Leah Gordon and Andre Eugene present at the ICI Curatorial Hub on January 26, 2016 HERE.

40 Years of Exhibiting Video

Posted on August 12, 2015

VIDEOART U.S.A.

Terry Fox, Children’s Tapes (cintas para niños), 1974, black and white video with sound, 30min. | Bruce Nauman, Lip Sync (Sincronización labial), 1969, black and white video with sound, 30 min.

ICI’s 40-year history of exhibiting video art in many ways encompasses the mission and trajectory of the organization. Through several video exhibitions organized by ICI ever since it was established in 1975, ICI has invested in regional and global networks of curators and artists as a means to expand cultural discourse broadly, and beyond borders.


VIDEOART U.S.A. Catalogue for VIDEOART U.S.A., 1975.

ICI’s first exhibition VIDEOART U.S.A. was curated by Jack Boulton in 1975, and showcased artists who were innovators of the new medium including Lynda BenglisNam June PaikKeth Sonnier, and Vito Acconci. The exhibition served as the American representation in the São Paulo Biennial, and was shown across Latin America from 1975-76. VIDEOART U.S.A. was also the first presentation of video in Peru when it stopped at Instituto Nacional de Cultura in Lima.

VIDEOART U.S.A. also provided the impetus for later exhibitions, including CAPS/ICI Traveling Video Festival (1981–84) curated by Nina SundellVideo Transformations (1986–88) curated by Lois BianchiPoints of Departure: Origins in Video (1990–91) curated by Jacqueline KainEye for I: Video Self-Portraits (1990–92) curated by Raymond BellourThe First Generation: Women and Video, 1970–1975 (1993–95) curated by JoAnn HanleyProject 35 (2010–), Project 35 Volume 2, (2012–) and Project 35: The Last Act, which have continued tracking contemporary approaches to the medium around the world.


VIDEO TRANSFORMATIONS Video Transformations Cover of catalogue for Video Transformations.

In 1986, Video Transformations brought together new video art developed in the 1980s by young artists who aimed to develop a new meld of the performing and visual arts through video. These works were not intended to be an imitation of stage, film, or studio work, but as an exploration of the screen as a medium in and of itself. Through dance, poetry, visual arts, drama, and music, these artists experimented with the television’s budding technology and created works with a diverse array of video subjects.


PROJECT 35 P35 Installation view of Project 35 at Centre PasquArt in Biel, Switzerland, 2012.

p35

Visitors to Project 35 at TheCube Project Space in Taipei, Taiwan, 2011.

Project 35 was conceived in 2010 on the 35th Anniversary of ICI, and reflects back on the impulse of VIDEOART U.S.A.. It recognized the medium’s potential for experimentation, and the ease by which it can be widely disseminated in flexible and expandable exhibition formats. The program consisted of single-channel videos selected by 35 international curators and traced a complexity of regional and global connections among practitioners from places as varied as Colombia, the Congo, and the Philippines.  The curators included Zoe Butt (Australia/Viietnam), Constance Lewallen (US), Bisi Silva (Nigeria), and Franklin Sirmans (US). The artists included Kota Ezawa (Germany/US), Ho Tzu Nyen (Singapore), Yukihiro Taguchi (Japan) and Zhou Xiaohu (China) among others. The exhibition has been presented in over 30 venues around the world, from Albania to East Jerusalem, Mongolia, and Senegal.

PROJECT 35 VOLUME 2

Project 35 Volume 2, installation view, Art Gallery of Windsor, 2013.

Following the widespread success of Project 35, ICI collaborated with 35 more international curators in 2012 to produce Project 35 Volume 2. The curators included Leezy Ahmady (Afghanistan/US) Rosina Cazali (Guatemala), Stuart Comer (US/UK), Abdellah Karroum (Morocco), and Christine Tohme (Lebanon), with video works by artists like Pavel Braila (Moldovia), Elena Damiani (Peru), and Sara Remo (Spain), among others. It has been exhibited in over 27 international art spaces, including a coordinated presentation across the Caribbean. These itinerant presentations have built a shared understanding of art practice by grasping the complexity of our contemporary landscape, and at the same time, generated diverse discourse inspiring artists and audiences all over the world.

PROJECT 35: THE LAST ACT

Project 35: The Last Act brings the five year project of Project 35 to the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow, presenting the work of many artists for the first time in the country. Each week a new, daily program of video works are screened. This weekly program has been prepared in collaboration with Russian artists (Olga Chernyshova, Evgeny Granilshikov), film critics (Alexey ArtamonovBoris Nelepo), journalists (Maria Kravtsova), art critics (Alexander Evangeli), curators (Elena Yushina, Aperto gallery; Andrey Misiano, Garage) museum directors (Anton Belov, Garage) and theater directors who will choose their personal favorites from the wide range of works, and continues ICI’s simultaneous focus on the local and global.

More information on VIDEOART U.S.A. hereVideo Transformations hereProject 35 hereProject 35 Volume 2 here, and Project 35: The Last Act here.

 

Spotlight: Martha Wilson

Posted on September 4, 2015

MW

Martha Wilson, A Portfolio of Models – The Goddess 1974, black and white gelatin silver print.

Martha Wilson is a pioneering feminist, artist, founder of the experimental artist-run space Franklin Furnace, and an ICI collaborator since the early days of ICI. Just three years after ICI was established, and at the same time as Wilson founded the alternative space Franklin Furnace, ICI produced Artists’ Books U.S.A, a unique survey exhibition of artists’ publications, co-curated by Wilson and Peter Frank. The show included well over a hundred examples of book art – showing a broad range of attitudes towards publishing, from ad-hoc to ephemeral, experimental to activist. From 1978 to 1980, it expanded the often informal distribution of these publications, reaching broad audiences in art spaces across North America.

Thirty years later, in 2008, ICI and Wilson, together with curator Peter Dykhuis, began working together on an evolving retrospective exhibition of her work, that would present her practice through various entry-points, in 8 art spaces internationally from 2010 to 2015.

MWSB

Spread in Martha Wilson Sourcebook: 40 Years of Reconsidering Performance, Feminism, Alternative Spaces

At the same time, ICI published Martha Wilson Sourcebook: 40 Years of Reconsidering Performance, Feminism, Alternative Spaces in 2011, the first publication in ICI’s Sourcebook series.

Earlier this year, ICI’s Alaina Claire Feldman worked together with Wilson to present Performing Franklin Furnace – a series of performances held at Participant Inc., New York, which captured the spirit of Franklin Furnace as a physical space, and was organized to coincide with the final presentation of Martha Wilson, the exhibition.

Coco Fusco

Coco Fusco performing Observations of Predation in Humans: A lecture by Dr. Zira as part of Performing Franklin Furnace. Participant Inc., New York, NY; February 27, 2015. Photo credIt: Heather Jones.

ICI’s first collaboration with Wilson in 1978 prompted a focus on independent publishing which has lasted over the last four decades and continues in many of ICI’s Hub events in support of independent publishing. Similarly, ICI’s work on Wilson’s performance practice is inscribed in a series of exhibitions and programs that have addressed performance in diverse ways in the last five years, including do itPerformance NowEN MAS’, among other events and training programs such as the Curatorial Intensive.

ICI 2015 HONOREES

 ICI 2015 HONOREES

Posted on September 17, 2015

For the last 25 years, ICI has recognized the individuals who pave the way for a forward-thinking generation of curators and artists, and those curators who have moved the field’s boundaries ahead. At the 40th Anniversary Benefit & Auction, ICI will honor Michael Govan, Wallis Annenberg Director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), with the Leo Award; and Beatrix Ruf, curator and the Director of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, with The Agnes Gund Curatorial Award.

THE LEO AWARD

The Leo Award (established in 1990) named after the late, renowned art dealer Leo Castelli, was created to recognize outstanding achievements in advancing the field of contemporary art, and the contributions of pioneering individuals who foster new opportunities and supportive environments for curators and artists. Past recipients of the Leo Award include Dimitris DaskalopoulosRoy and Dorothy LichtensteinMiuccia Prada, and Dasha Zhukova.

This year, as ICI celebrates 40 years of commitment to curators and contemporary art, we pay homage to Michael Govan, CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director of LACMA. For more than 25 years, Govan has been in the leadership of major art institutions in the U.S., and has played a significant part in the changing role of art museums in American life. Amid considerable transformations in the artistic and curatorial fields, and in the arts funding landscape, he has come to represent a leading force dedicated to the support of artists, contemporary art and curatorial practice, and audience engagement.

From 1994 to 2006, Govan was President and Director of Dia Art Foundation in New York City, where he significantly enlarged the collection, and spearheaded the creation of Dia:Beacon in the Hudson Valley. Since he became director of LACMA in 2006, he has overseen a period of unprecedented expansion of the museum’s campus, and of its audience. Govan and his team have raised LACMA’s international profile, while firmly positioning it as a cultural and civic center for Los Angeles. He also set as an early priority his vision to have contemporary artists interact with the museum’s historic collections, through commissions and artist-curated exhibitions.

THE AGNES GUND CURATORIAL AWARD

The Agnes Gund Curatorial Award honors a curator who has made an outstanding contribution to the presentation and discourse of contemporary art. The “Aggie” Award was named after ICI Trustee Emerita Agnes Gund in recognition of her long-standing dedication to ICI, to contemporary art, and to the curatorial field. Past recipients of the Agnes Gund Curatorial Award include Germano CelantLynne CookeOkwui EnwezorRoselee GoldbergAlanna HeissMatthew Higgs, and Robert Storr. The 2015 Agnes Gund Curatorial Award will be presented to Beatrix Ruf, curator and Director of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

Throughout her career, Ruf has shown unwavering support of artists, helping define many careers. She has followed her trust in the experimental, and consistently nurtured emerging art practice, giving several young artists their first museum exhibitions and commissioning them for new art installations. Through key survey exhibitions, she has also inscribed more established artists such as Sturtevant, Isa Genzken, Rosemarie Trockel, Laura Owens, Yang Fudong and Ian Wallace in an art historical arc.

Like many curators in recent years, Ruf has also worked towards building strong infrastructures for contemporary art practice. From 2001 to 2014, she ran the Kunsthalle Zürich, where she initiated an extensive building expansion while also developing a distinguished exhibitions program.

Ruf believes in the importance of fostering art discourse, and as such she served as a Board Member of JRP|Ringier, one of the world’s leading contemporary art publishing houses, for many years. Committed to institutional cooperation across borders, Ruf often worked within a network of prominent European institutions including the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Tate Liverpool, the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, and Moderna Museet in Stockholm. Since 2014, she has been the Director of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

The 2015 Leo Award and the 2015 Agnes Gund Curatorial Award will be presented at ICI’s 40th Anniversary Benefit & Auction in New York City on November 18.