The Frame Curatorial Research Fellowship is a four-year programme for contemporary art curators. The programme explores new forms of research that renew curatorial and institutional working habits.
The programme’s host, Frame Contemporary Art Finland and its partners Queens Museum in New York and Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, are pleased to present the two fellows selected for 2024: Soph Boobyer and curatorial partnership Laura Serejo Genes & Kiyoto Koseki.
Selections were made by Frame’s Head of Programme Jussi Koitela, Queens Museum’s Head of Exhibitions/Curator Hitomi Iwasaki and Van Abbemuseum’s Director Charles Esche and Assistant Curator Teresa Cos Rebollo.
Soph Boobyer, based in Amsterdam, has a mediative practice focused on the proximities and gestures between bodies in space, advocating for more multi-sensory presentations of knowledge. Through a combined curatorial and craft practice, they use talking, listening, writing, making, [re]using, altering, disrupting, gathering, inviting, and visiting to consider eco-critical and -feminist contexts.For the Frame Curatorial Research Fellowship with Van Abbemuseum, Boobyer’s research will investigate soil’s role in the art museum canon, focusing on its performativities as both preservationist and conservationist, and capacities as guide and wayfinder. The outcome of the research will manifest as part of the public programming for The Soils Project at Van Abbemuseum, highlighting the material agency of these soil grounds as a site for the practice of archiving and exhibiting with its visitor participation.
Soph Boobyer. Photo by Miguel Teodoro.
Laura Serejo Genes & Kiyoto Koseki work together as a curatorial partnership based in New York. They produce site specific exhibitions and programs by building upon existing systems to draw new social, material, and historical connections.
Focusing on the curatorial potential of diplomacy, philanthropy, and industry, their Curatorial Research Fellowship with the Queens Museum is centered upon Yrjö Alfred Paloheimo, Commissioner of the Finnish Pavilion of the 1939–40 New York World’s Fair, and Leonora Frances Curtin Paloheimo, founder of the Native Market in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Paloheimos’ collaborative activities from the 1940s onwards serve as examples to consider shifts and developments in cultural and political imaginaries from the Post-War era through neoliberal globalization.
Frame’s Head of Programme Jussi Koitela says: “The open call attracted a large number of exciting proposals that challenged predominant curatorial models for curatorial research with an experimental and critical approach. Soph Boobyer’s fellowship demonstrates how research can be material-focused, bodily, and socially engaging, overcoming spatial and epistemological divisions of art institutions, culture and nature. Laura Serejo Genes & Kiyoto Koseki’s inquiry looks at alternative characteristics of the curator as a diplomat and philanthropist. Their research connects national, cultural and economic realms as an exhibition.”
Open Call received over 200 proposals
This was the second and last round of the Frame Curatorial Fellowship Programme. By the deadline, Frame received 211 proposals addressing the research contexts “Soils” and “Curating With Pasts”.
The fellows will begin their work in early 2024. During the fellowship, they will present their research through exhibitions, discursive events, or other occasions. The first fellows chosen for the programme, Ama Josephine Budge and Nikolay Smirnov, also conclude their fellowships in 2024.
The Frame Curatorial Research Fellowship programme is supported by the Kone Foundation.
Photo by Laura Serejo Genes & Kiyoto Koseki.
Soph Boobyer
Soph Boobyer (she/they) has a mediating practice focused on the proximities and gestures between bodies in space, advocating for more multi-sensory presentations of knowledge. Through a combined curatorial and craft practice, they use talking, listening, writing, making, [re]using, altering, disrupting, gathering, inviting, and visiting to consider eco-critical and -feminist contexts. Her most recent projects include ‘For A Kin-Aesthetics’ and ‘If Glueing Yourself To The Hay Wain Isn’t Really Your Thing’, that have been part of an ongoing research into the dynamics of haptics in convergence with environmentalism and art exhibition spaces, to promote more accessible and polymorphic modes of curation.
Soph holds a MA in Geo-Design from Design Academy Eindhoven (NL), and a BA in Three Dimensional Design from Manchester School of Art (UK), and since 2014 has worked individually and collaboratively on such themes above with Manchester City Council (UK), Guldagergaard Ceramic Research Centre (DK), Stedelijk Museum (NL) and KUBES Foundation (NL).
Laura Serejo Genes & Kiyoto Koseki
Laura Serejo Genes & Kiyoto Koseki work together as a curatorial partnership based in New York. They produce exhibitions and programs for specific sites, building upon existing systems to draw new social, material, and historical connections. Laura and Kiyoto each participated in SOMA Summer and the Newburgh Community Land Bank Artist-In-Vacancy initiative where they developed public programs in collaboration with local organizations and businesses. They both pursued graduate research between 2016–18; Laura earned a Master of Science in Art, Culture, and Technology from MIT and Kiyoto earned a Master in Design Studies in Art, Design, and the Public Domain from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Between 2022–23, Laura Serejo Genes & Kiyoto Koseki served as Curators-in-Residence at Abrons Arts Center and participated in the Interdisciplinary Art and Theory Program in New York.