Visitor Programme 2022

Tautvydas Urbelis is a curator, (ex)philosopher and writer working in the field of contemporary art, education and speculative architecture. Focusing on intersectional modes of knowledge distribution, transdisciplinary exchange and unruly fictioning, Urbelis explores the poetics and tensions of being in an increasingly complex world.

Currently he is a curator of Alternative Education and Public Programmes at Rupert (Vilnius, Lithuania), an editor of Regeneration [and its Discontents] (Architecture Fund, 2021) and leads a research project Architecture of Lust. Urbelis curated events for and in collaboration with Architecture Fund, Contemporary Art Centre, EXPO Chicago, Future Architecture, Kaunas Architecture Festival, London Architecture Festival, Architecture of Shame, International Kaunas Film Festival and others.

Online meetings were arranged in collaboration with Titanik Gallery in Turku.

Raluca Voinea
Curator, art critic and co-director of tranzit.ro
HICP residency in November

Raluca Voinea is a curator and art critic, based in Bucharest. Since 2012, she is the co-director of the association tranzit.ro. Between 2012 and 2019, she managed their space in Bucharest which included an art gallery, a communitarian permaculture garden and an Orangery (a space for hosting fragile plants and ideas), all developed organically and in response to both the local context and to international frameworks. In 2021, the ideas and approaches that configured this space extended into a new project – The Experimental Station for Research on Art and Life. Situated in the village of Silistea Snagovului, 40 km north of Bucharest, it is a collective project realised by tranzit.ro together with a group of artists, curators, theorists, economists and other cultural workers.

Voinea’s residency was organised in collaboration with Kunsthalle Seinäjoki.

Sara Greavu
Curator of Visual Arts at Project Arts Centre, Dublin
26–30 October

Sara Greavu (Curator of Visual Arts at Project Arts Centre, Dublin) is a curator, writer and organiser. She has a particular interest in how art can recognise existing social structures, propose alternative histories and genealogies, and prefigure different social relations. Previous curatorial and development roles include Centre for Contemporary Art Derry~Londonderry, VOID, and Outburst Arts, Belfast; in addition to working independently. Institutional and independent projects have included artists such as Paul Maheke, Rosa-Johan Uddoh, Renate Lorenz & Pauline Boudry and Phil Collins, and new commissions by Aideen Doran and Eimear Walshe, among others. In CCA she initiated the two-year residency programme, Our Neighbourhood, which engaged with local communities of place and communities of interest, alongside artists Sarah Pierce and Sarah Browne. In 2019, in partnership with artist Andrea Francke, she developed Knowledge is Made Here, an alternative pedagogical practice, produced with queer, trans and non-binary young people. Open the book at a different page, a research project with artist Ciara Phillips and former members of the Derry Film and Video Workshop, dealt with intertwined political and cultural initiatives in Derry in the 1980s.

Greavu’s visit was organised in collaboration with Titanik Gallery.

Etienne Bernard
Director of Frac Bretagne in Rennes
22–26 October

Etienne Bernard is the director of the Frac Bretagne in Rennes after directing Passerelle Contemporary art center in Brest (2013-2019) and the International Festival of Poster and Graphic Design in Chaumont (2007-2009).

He has also served as curator-at-large at the CAPC Museum of Contemporary Art in Bordeaux (2007-2009). In 2018, he has curated, along with Céline Kopp, the 6th edition of Les Ateliers de Rennes-Contemporary Art Biennale.

From 2010 to 2013, he set up and coordinated Fieldwork: Marfa a research-in-residency program in Marfa, Texas. In the course of his career, he has developped many projects involving artists such as Pauline Boudry & Renate Lorenz, Bouchra Khalili, Mierle Laderman Ukeless, Nathaniel Mellors, Senga Nengudi, Martin Parr, Koki Tanaka, Fredrik Vaerslev, Erika Vogt or Ming Wong. Etienne Bernard has also taught art theory at University Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne (2008-2013) and at Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-arts in Nantes (2010-2013).

As an art critic, he has been collaborating with French magazines Archistorm and 02 and published in numerous books (Cura books, Les Presses du Réel, Exit, etc.). 

Helga Christoffersen
Curator of the AKG Nordic Art and Culture Initiative
3–23 October

Helga Christoffersen joined the Buffalo AKG in 2020 as Curator of the AKG Nordic Art and Culture Initiative. Prior to that she was the Executive Director of Art Hub Copenhagen, served as Assistant and Associate Curator at the New Museum in New York from 2013 – 2019 and as Artistic Organizer of the 55^th Venice Biennale.

Christoffersen’s visit was organised in collaboration with Saastamoinen Foundation and Consulate General of Finland in New York.

Alexandra Landré
Artistic director at Stroom Den Haag
Attending the Rehearsing Hospitalities programme in October

Alexandra Landré holds an MA in Art History from the University of Amsterdam (NL). She has been involved in a large number of national and international cultural projects, with a particular focus on innovative forms of co-creation, new commissions and audience participation. Until 2020 she was the artistic director of Kunstvereniging Diepenheim (NL) where she presented acclaimed exhibitions like Disconnection (2019/20), programmed a living collection of land art projects with artists like a.o. herman de vries, as well as artists-in-residency-programs in collaboration with the Mondrian Fund. In her curatorial career she has collaborated with De Appel, Amsterdam, Stedelijk Bureau Amsterdam, Synch Festival, Athens (GR), Jindrich Chalupecky Society, Prague (CZ), Kunsthalle Muenster (DE) and Kunsthalle Wien (AT). In addition, Landré is a prolific writer, mediator, and educator with a keen eye for talent development. In recent years she has been affiliated with the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, Royal Academy of Art in The Hague (NL), Higher Institute for Fine Arts / HISK in Ghent (B) and The Glasgow School Art of Art (UK).

Currently, Landré is the Artistic Director in Stroom Den Haag.

Ameli Klein
Writer and curator
Attending the Rehearsing Hospitalities programme in October

Based between Venice and Graz, Ameli Klein is working as a writer and curator. 

She has been a visiting lecturer at the IZK Institute for Contemporary Art of the TU Graz, at COOP of the Roaming Academy of the Dutch Art Institute, a visiting critic at the Design Department of the Royal Academy London and is currently working at the DFG project The dimensions of techne in the fine arts (manifestations / systems / narratives) at the University of Graz. Ameli was an EPIC Fellow at the AAMC Engagement Program for International Curators with Terra Foundation and Art Fund_ and has been invited to participate in the Anthropocene Campus Venice by the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science and the HKW.  

Ameli frequently organises exhibition and programming formats, past collaborations include e-flux Screening Room, ACFNY, Drugo More, and Stellwerk Kassel. Previously, she was a Curator in Residence at the SCL, Shanghai Biennial, the V-A-C Curatorial Lab Venice and at Artpace San Antonio. She has held positions at the HALLE FUER KUNST Steiermark and Castello di Potentino, and has worked at Il Giardino di Daniel Spoerri, the Hood Museum of Art, the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art and at La Biennale di Venezia.

Can Sungu
Curator and Artistic director of bi’bak and Sinema Transtopia
Attending the Rehearsing Hospitalities programme in October

Can Sungu is a freelance artist, curator and researcher. He studied film, interdisciplinary arts and visual communication design in Istanbul and Berlin. He has given lectures on film and video production, curated various programs and events on film and migration, and taken part in numerous exhibitions. Selected publications include Please Rewind – German-Turkish Film- and Video Culture in Berlin (Archive Books, 2020), Bitter Things – Narratives and Memories of Transnational Families (Archive Books, 2018). He has worked as a juror and consultant for the Berlinale Forum, International Short Film Festival Oberhausen and the DAAD, among others. He is the Co-Founder and Artistic Director of bi‘bak and Sinema Transtopia in Berlin.

Recent curatorial projects include Cinema of Commoning (2022), The Invitees (2021), Sinema+++ (2021), Interferences (2019) all with Malve Lippmann, Outernationale (2020–21), Please Rewind (2019) and Fiktionsbescheinigung at Berlinale Forum (with Enoka Ayemba, Karina Griffith, Jacqueline Nsiah, Biene Pilavci, 2021–23).

Canan Batur
Curator of Live Programmes at Nottingham Contemporary
Attending the Rehearsing Hospitalities programme in October

Canan Batur is the curator of Live Programmes at Nottingham Contemporary, where she leads the partnerships between the University of Nottingham and Nottingham Trent University and works on numerous collaborative research programmes, including the multi-platform commission series Emergency & Emergence (2022 – ongoing), Seeing Through Flames (2022 – ongoing), The Adventure Playground: Architectures of Contemporary Play (2022 – ongoing) and After Growth: A Symposium on Post-Capitalist Imaginaries (2022). 

Recently, Batur worked at De La Warr Pavilion, where she developed exhibitions Alexi Marshall: Cursebreakers, All in the Same Storm: Pandemic Patchwork Stories, Holly Hendry: Indifferent Deep, Marc Bauer: Mal/Etre and Zadie Xa: Child of Magohalmi and the Echoes of Creation; as well as programmes Care and Citizenship and Rock Against Racism: Militant Entertainment on Radio. She is also the co-founder and co-director of the Museum for the Displaced. Batur has written and developed projects for Platform Asia (2021); NTU CCA, Singapore (2020); RAW Material Company, Dakar (2019); Rupert, Vilnius (2019); 1.1, Basel (2019); Shanghai Biennial XII, Shanghai (2018). She co-directed clearview.ltd in London (2016–2018) and was a member of the Baltic Triennial XIII curatorial team (2017–2018).

Edvinas Grinkevičius
Curator and Artist
Attending the Rehearsing Hospitalities programme in October

Edvinas Grinkevičius (b. 1988, LT) is a curator, cultural worker and artist, currently based in Kaunas, Lithuania. The broad spectre of his practice consists of curatorial and artistic activities, all connected through an active interest in leftist and queer-feminist politics and practices, which aim to provide artistic practices with a transformative potential especially within institutionalised structures.

Grinkevičius has worked as a curator at the Kaunas Artists’ House since 2017. In 2019, he started to curate the programme Unlearning Eastern Europe. In 2021, he with art historian and curator Rebeka Poldsam started Baltic queer art and politics network Black Rose. Black Carnation.

Since 2016 Grinkevičius has been one of the initiators and co-curators of WE ARE PROPAGANDA, the counter-culture queer movement. The same year marked the beginning of performing terrorist drag dj performances under the artist’s alter ego – drag persona Querelle.

Grinkevičius’ visit was part of the Re-Practicing Hospitalities network funded by Nordic Culture Point.

Ilaria Gadenz
Art Manager and Radio Producer
Attending the Rehearsing Hospitalities programme in October

Ilaria Gadenz is an art professional with sixteen years’ experience in the fields of art management and independent radio and audio production. In 2006 she co-founded Radio Papesse – an online platform and audio archive devoted to contemporary art – for which she has produced podcasts, documentaries and numerous interviews with artists, curators and practitioners. Since 2019, she co-curates LUCIA, a festival dedicated to the listening of radio works and podcasts.

Between 2018 and 2020 she was the associate researcher of Pratiques d’Hospitalité – Platform for critical research and political imagination, in the frame of the activities of the research unit Hospitalité artistique et activisme visuel pour une Europe diasporique et post-occidentale. 

Since 2013 she has co-curated Süden Radio, a sound investigation of the South that tries to problematize its discourse by acknowledging the sound productions and listening practices that both echo back to the new geo-political and cultural panorama and question the way we listen to reality.

Malve Lippman
Artist, Curator and Cultural Manager
Attending the Rehearsing Hospitalities programme in October

Malve Lippmann studied at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart and at the Institute for Art in Context (UdK) in Berlin. As a freelance stage designer and artist, she has been internationally responsible for the design of numerous performances, opera- and theatre productions. Since 2010, Lippmann has been working as a curator and cultural manager, leading artistic workshops and seminars and being active in various cultural and community projects. She is the Co-Founder and Artistic Director of bi’bak, a project space based in Berlin, with a focus on transnational narratives, migration, global mobility and their aesthetic dimensions. She has also founded Sinema Transtopia, a curated film series dedicated to understand cinema as an important public sphere of sociality.

Lippman’s selected publications include Please Rewind – German-Turkish Film- and Video Culture in Berlin (Archive Books, 2020), Bitter Things – Narratives and Memories of Transnational Families (Archive Books, 2018).

Recent curatorial projects include Cinema of Commoning (2022), The Invitees (2021), Sinema+++ (2021), Interferences (2019) – all with Can Sungu, Critical Conditions (with Sarnt Utamachote, Rosalia Namsai Engchuan, Pia Chakraverti-Würthwein and Eirini Fountedaki, 2021) and Sinemanino (with Martin Ganguly, 2021)

Viktoria Draganova
Curator, writer and educator
Attending the Rehearsing Hospitalities programme in October

Viktoria Draganova is a curator, writer, and educator based in Sofia. She is the director and founder of Swimming Pool, a generative concept and platform with a focus on intersectional and research practices, art education, and art politics. In 2021, Viktoria initiated the Center for Social Vision as a research and action platform concerned with how art and related fields participate in the creation of social relations and social infrastructure. Currently, she is launching the Journal for Social Vision. 

Viktoria has studied law and art history and holds a degree in law and a PhD in legal history.

Wei Ting Tseng
Musician, Visual Artist and representative of Tenthaus collective
Attending the Rehearsing Hospitalities programme in October

Wei Ting Tseng is an Oslo-based composer, sound artist, cellist, and pianist. She is a classical trained cellist and pianist and later on expended her footprints in contemporary music and improvised music. Collaborated with musicians such as Ayumi Tanaka, Jo Berger Myre, Kjetil Jerve, ca. Since 2020, she has been actively engaging her musical experience with visual art and socially engaged art, including exhibitions Vi Sees, SeSiSå, Genetic Salon and Tistblu. The experience in visual art inspires her to explore other possibilities in notation, which liberate performers from the constraints of notation and make them active participants in the creation of music.

Currently, Tseng works as a Radio Producer and Project Coordinator for the Tenthaus Art Collective and represents them while visiting Finland.

Tseng’s visit was part of the Re-Practicing Hospitalities network funded by Nordic Culture Point.

Xenia Kalpaktsoglou
Curator and founding member of Laboratory for the Urban Commons (Neo Cosmos) collective
Attending the Rehearsing Hospitalities programme in October

Xenia Kalpaktsoglou’s curatorial practice is rooted in collaboration, the creation of (trans-)local projects and initiatives, and in the reconsideration of the protocols of exchange and production between cultural producers and institutions.

Kalpaktsoglou co-founded the Athens Biennale and co-directed it from 2005–2016; during those years she was primarily active with the curatorial team XYZ. Between 2006 and 2008 she was the director of the DESTE Foundation. She is a founding member of the Athens-based Laboratory for the Urban Commons (Neo Cosmos), that develops and produces research, artistic practices, urban interventions and education. Currently, Kalpaktsoglou is a PhD candidate at the Artistic Research department at the Zurich University of the Arts / Linz University of the Arts.

Triin Metsla
Art historian, lecturer and PhD student of Estonian Academy of Arts
Attending the Rehearsing Hospitalities programme in October

Triin Metsla is an art historian, lecturer and PhD student of Estonian Academy of Arts. As a curator and art historian, her main interests concern exile studies, eco-aesthetics and environmental humanities. She defended her MA-thesis on exile art of Estonian refugee artists after WWII at the Estonian Academy of Arts in 2018 and is currently continuing this research. Her recent and upcoming curatorial projects concern the conceptual turn surrounding co-species and natural environment. 

Metsla’s visit was part of the Re-Practicing Hospitalities network funded by Nordic Culture Point.

Maria Helen Känd
Curator and art critic
Attending the Rehearsing Hospitalities programme in October

Maria Helen Känd is a curator and art critic. In her curatorial practice, she focuses on socio-psychological topics that disclose the fragility of social fabrics and that invite audiences to perceive and reflect on the complexities of identity. In her recent projects, she has taken a more intuitive approach towards curating in creating poetic experiments with works of artists that share formal features and express mythological and archetypal themes. She works as a freelance art journalist and as a project manager and curator at the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (EKKM). In 2021, Känd was the laureate of the art critic scholarship by the CCA Estonia and the Estonian Association of Art Historians and Curators.

Exhibition projects: ars viva 2022 – Agents of perception at Kai art center (with Lewis Ham- mond, Tamina Amadyar, Mooni Perry, Janis Dzirnieks, Anastasia Sosunova, Laura Põld). Presence of People Absent at EKA gallery(Katariin Mudist’s solo exhibition), I Share Myself with Pleasure at Naked Island project space (Mia Raadik’s solo exhibition), east end(s) at Põhjala factory (with Marko Mäetamm, Tanja Muravskaja, Flo Kasearu, Alexei Gordin, Sandra Ko- sorotova, Tanel Rander and Madlen Hirtentreu), Outside of Oneself at ARS art factory (with Johannes Luik, Katariin Mudist, Mathias Väärsi, Liis Vares, Maarja Tõnisson, Lisann Lillevere, Johanna Ruukholm, Emilia Furs and Nusrat Jahan).

She has studied film, theatre, and media science (University of Vienna), cultural theory and comparative literature (BA, Tallinn University) and currently she is completing her MA in curatorial studies at the Estonian Academy of Arts. 

Känd’s visit was part of the Re-Practicing Hospitalities network funded by Nordic Culture Point.

Karen Vestergaard Andersen
Art Historian and Independent Curator
Attending the Rehearsing Hospitalities programme in October

Karen Vestergaard Andersen is a Danish art historian and independent curator engaged in intersectional feminist practices, somaesthetics and newmaterialist knowledge and exhibition production within the field of contemporary art. Co-director and curator of ARIEL – Feminisms in The Aesthetics, a mobile and digital archive, publishing house and exhibition project, committed to supporting existing and facilitating new structures for care and sustainable collaborative practices, expanding notions on equity and the eco-commons through feminist curatorial practice and research.

Andersen’s Visit was part of the Re-Practicing Hospitalities network funded by Nordic Culture Point.

Ioana Leca
Artistic Director of Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art
Attending the Rehearsing Hospitalities programme in October

Ioana Leca is the Artistic Director of Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art.

Ioana Leca is a curator and cultural strategist, currently active as Artistic Director of Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (GIBCA), where she is looking into testing possibilities for the biennial format to closely respond to its site and be a generous experimentation platform for artists and curators. Recent projects include the editions in 2017, 2019 and 2021 of the biennial, together with curators Nav Haq and Lisa Rosendahl, a series of public programmes on remembrance and memorialization in public space and in public discourse, as well as the contribution to the publication Biennials as Sites of Historical Narration (Mousse Publishing, 2022).

Curator, producer and cultural strategist, she was previously Director of NAU Gallery in Stockholm, and programmer at the Romanian Cultural Institute in Stockholm. Together with Hanna Lundborg she founded the nomadic curatorial platform Konstkontoret.

Leca’s visit was part of the Re-Practicing Hospitalities network funded by Nordic Culture Point.

Iben Bach Elmstrøm
Curator at the Den Frie Centre for Contemporary Art
Attending the Rehearsing Hospitalities programme in October

Iben Bach Elmstrøm is a curator at the Den Frie Centre for Contemporary Art.  She has previously curated the exhibition The Object is To Change The Soul at Heartland Festival in 2018, Ars Memoria with artist Helene Nymann in Rundetaarn 2017, as well as she been the director at SixtyEight Art Institute from 2011 to 2018.

Most recently, she has worked for CHART design – a commercial platform for art and design and is the curator behind The Aesthetic Ear – a sound-based and performative project at Rønnebæksholm art gallery. Currently she is working on preparing a solo exhibition with Danish artists Oda Knudsen.

Elmstrøm’s Visit was part of the Re-Practicing Hospitalities network funded by Nordic Culture Point.

Evelyn Raudsepp
Curator and producer
Attending the Rehearsing Hospitalities programme in October

Evelyn Raudsepp is a Tallinn-based curator and producer for performing and visual arts, interested in cross-disciplinary projects and experimental formats. She received a Bachelor Degree in theatre studies in University of Tartu and Master’s Degree in art studies in Estonian Academy of Art. She is currently working as a creative producer for Independent Dance Stage (STL) and curator, project manager in Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (EKKM).

Raudsepp’s curatorial position centres around her playful invitation to artists and curators to step beyond their conventional practices and working methods. With her performative curation she creates unique formats in which the audience is also welcomed to activate their perceptional horizon in order to meet unexpected artistic situations.

Raudsepp’s curatorial projects include Greatest Hits at EKKM, 2022; Body Space(d) at Tallinn Art Hall, 2019; (Hyper)emotional: YOU at EKKM, 2017; Artishok Biennial at Theatre NO99, 2016.

Raudsepp’s visit was part of the Re-Practicing Hospitalities network funded by Nordic Culture Point.

Emily Fahlén
Independent Curator, Educator and Writer
Attending the Rehearsing Hospitalities programme in October

Emily Fahlén is an independent curator, educator and writer based in Stockholm. She is co-director of the art space Mint – located in the Workers’ Educational Association in Stockholm. As the practice of a museum relates to – and is in dialogue with – its collection, Mint allows its program to be inspired and directed by the history of the building and its events, struggles, organisations and cultural expressions. Fahlén was also the artistic director and co-curator for the Luleå Biennial 2020: Time on Earth and 2018: Tidal Ground. Between 2011–2017 Fahlén worked as a mediator and producer at Tensta konsthall.

Fahlén’s visit was part of the Re-Practicing Hospitalities network funded by Nordic Culture Point.

David Ashley Kerr
Independent Curator and Writer-Researcher
Attending the Rehearsing Hospitalities programme in October

David Ashley Kerr is an independent curator and writer-researcher. His practice is primarily interested in how the post digital affects our intimate lives, as well as engaging with the real and virtual divide, and ecological art practices in the Nordic-Baltic region. David has played an active role in arts development in Melbourne (Naarm), Australia, and participates in exhibitions, publications, conferences and events in various capacities throughout the EU and further abroad. Living and working in Latvia, he is the director of LOW, an established independent art space in Rīga.

David Ashley Kerr’s visit was part of the Re-Practicing Hospitalities network funded by Nordic Culture Point.

Christopher Sand Iversen
Co-founder and director of SixtyEight Art Institute in Copenhagen
Attending the Rehearsing Hospitalities programme in October

Christopher Sand-Iversen is educated in Art History at the Courtauld Institute of Art and Visual Culture at the University of Copenhagen. He is a co-founder and the current director of SixtyEight Art Institute in Copenhagen, as well as owner and co-editor of the Institute’s publishing arm Really Simple Syndication. He has previously worked at The Art Newspaper’s head office in London and at various Danish museums.  

Sand-Iversen’s visit was part of the Re-Practicing Hospitalities network funded by Nordic Culture Point.

Asrin Haidari
Curator and organiser
Attending the Rehearsing Hospitalities programme in October

Asrin Haidari is a curator and organiser based in Stockholm. She is co-director of the art space Mint – located in the Workers’ Educational Association in Stockholm – with Emily Fahlén. Haidari has recently been working as curator at Moderna Museet in Stockholm and the artistic director and co-curator for the Luleå Biennial 2020: Time on Earth and 2018: Tidal Ground. Between 2013–2017 Haidari was part of the team at Tensta konsthall.

Haidari’s visit was part of the Re-Practicing Hospitalities network funded by Nordic Culture Point.

Stamatina Gregory
Chief Curator and Director of Programs at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art
16–21 September

Stamatina Gregory is a curator and a historian of contemporary art. Currently, they are the Chief Curator and Director of Programs at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, dedicated to LGBTQA+ art and queer perspectives. They have taught art history, critical theory, and writing at The New School, the School of Visual Arts, the University of Pennsylvania, the Steinhardt school at New York University and currently, the Sotheby’s MA Program.

Gregory has organised exhibitions for institutions including The Cooper Union, FLAG Art Foundation, Austrian Cultural Forum, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia and the Santa Monica Museum of Art.

Gregory was the curator of New York photographer and activist Brian Weil’s retrospective at the ICA, Philadelphia, and they were the Deputy Curator of the inaugural pavilion of The Bahamas at the 55th Venice Biennale.

The visit was organised in collaboration with ANTI Festival, which Gregory attended.

Sarah Abdu Bushra
Curator of Visual and Performing Arts exhibitions
HICP residency in September

Sarah Bushra is a curator of visual and performing arts exhibitions. Her research interest lies in art coming from three East African countries – Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda; and documenting the underlying ties among these localities towards establishing a robust network that grows into an interconnected arts ecosystem. She works to sharpen the East African gaze by centring its archives as well as contemporary practices of art-making, contributing to the plurality of existing narratives concerning exhibition making and curatorial praxis. She is a co-founder of Contemporary Nights, an Addis-based artist cum curatorial collective, a 2020 curatorial fellow at ARAK collection, and a recipient of 2021 visas pour la creation residency in collaboration with Versant Sud, Marseille.

Bushra’s HICP residency was organised in collaboration with Kunsthalle Kohta.

Khanyisile Mbongwa
Independent Curator & Curator of the Liverpool Biennial 2023
June

Khanyisile Mbongwa is a Cape Town based independent curator, award-winning artist and sociologist who engages with her curatorial practice Curing & Care; using the creative to instigate spaces for emancipatory practices, joy and play.

Mbongwa is the curator of Puncture Points, founding member and curator of Twenty Journey and former Executive Director of Handspring Trust Puppets. She’s one of the founding members of the arts collective Gugulective, Vasiki Creative Citizens and WOC poetry collective Rioters In Session. 

She has worked locally and internationally since 2012 on various curatorial projects including Demonstrations: Performing Being Black (2013) in Cape Town, a residency at JIWAR in Spain (2015), What Will We Tell Freedom? (2016), Umnikelo Oshisiwe (2016) at Afreaka Festival in Brazil, BONE 19 Festival in Switzerland (2017) and the National Arts Festival in South Africa (2017). During her research residency at CAT.Cologne, she curated BLUEPRINT: Where There’s Nowhere To Go, Where Is Home? (2018).

Mbongwa has been a guest lecturer at the University of Cape Town, Durban University of Technology, University of Zurich, University of Basel, Rhodes University, and has been an adhoc lecturer at Cape Town Creative Academy.

Her most recent projects include, in 2020, Process as Resistance, Resilience & Regeneration – a group exhibition co-curated with Julia Haarmann, and Athi-Patra Ruga’s solo iiNyanka Zonyaka (The Lunar Songbook) at Norval Foundation. In 2021, she curated History’s Footnote: On Love & Freedom at Marres, House for Contemporary Culture in Maastrict, Netherlands. Mbongwa was the Chief Curator of the Stellenbosch Triennale 2020 and is the Curator for the Liverpool Biennial 2023. 

Lily Hall
Curator at The Showroom
19–26 May

Lily Hall is a curator at The Showroom, London, with a programme focused on collaborative approaches to cultural production within its locality and beyond. She combines this with an interdependent curatorial practice. 

Selected recent international curatorial projects include Muros Blandos, ser entre bordes, [Soft Walls, Being Between Borders], co-curated with Daniela Berger and Mette Kjærgaard Præst at Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende (MSSA), Santiago, Chile, 2017-18; Jaroslav Kyša: Fifth Force at Zahorian & Van Espen, Prague, 2018; Surface Tensions, Pavla and Lucia Scerankova at Pump House Gallery, London in partnership with Czech Centre, London, 2017.

Often exploring the spaces between publishing, experimental print-based platforms and exhibition making as a curator and writer, Lily has worked in curatorial and editorial capacities over the past decade with institutions in the UK including the Jerwood Foundation (2009-10) Calvert 22 (2012-15), Raven Row (2016) and Chisenhale Gallery (2017) amongst others; and on collaborative projects within and beyond these institutional frameworks.

Recent teaching and visiting lecturer roles have included contributions at the School of Fine Art (MPhil/PhD programmes) at the Royal College of Art, London, 2017; and Exhibition Studies (MRes programme) at Central St Martins, London, 2019-21.Between 2016-17 she was a member of the jury for the Oskár Čepan Award for contemporary art, Slovakia. She holds an MA in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art, London, and BA in Art History and Literature from the University of East Anglia, UK.

Diana Campbell Betancourt
Chief Curator of the Dhaka Art Summit
23–27 May

Diana Campbell Betancourt is a Princeton educated American curator who has been working in South and Southeast Asia since 2010, primarily in India, Bangladesh, and the Philippines. She is committed to fostering a transnational art world, and her plural and long-range vision address the concerns of underrepresented regions and artists alongside the more established in manifold forums. While she was born in Los Angeles, her maternal family being indigenous CHamoru from the island of Guam, her heritage inspires her curatorial practice which seeks to amplify the reach of indigenous voices. 

Since 2013, she has served as the Founding Artistic Director of Dhaka-based Samdani Art Foundation, Bangladesh, and Chief Curator of the Dhaka Art Summit, leading the critically acclaimed 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020 editions and envisioning the upcoming 2023 edition. Campbell has developed the Dhaka Art Summit into a leading research and exhibitions platform for art and its relationship to South Asia, bringing together artists, architects, curators, and writers from across South Asia through a largely commission-based model where new work and exhibitions are born in Bangladesh, also adding a scholarly element to the platform with a think tank connecting modern art histories in and across Africa, South and Southeast Asia in collaboration with the Getty Foundation, Cornell University Center for Comparative Modernities, the Asia Art Archive, and the Samdani Art Foundation. In addition to her exhibition-making practice, Campbell is responsible for developing the Samdani Art Foundation collection and drives its international collaborations ahead of opening the foundation’s permanent home and the community-based residency programme at Srihatta, the Samdani Art Centre, and Sculpture Park in Sylhet. Building upon this experience – she is curating DesertX 2023 in the Coachella Valley, linking creativity at climate extremes of drought and flood.

Concurrent to her work in Bangladesh from 2016 to 2018, Campbell was also the Founding Artistic Director of Bellas Artes Projects in the Philippines, a non-profit international residency and exhibition programme with sites in Manila and Bataan, and curated Frieze Projects in London for the 2018 and 2019 editions of the fair. She chairs the board of the Mumbai Art Room and is an advisor to AFIELD, a global network of socially engaged artistic practices. She is currently leading the international activities of the EDI Global Forum for Education and Integration which is an initiative of the Morra Greco Foundation in Naples in partnership with the Campania Region of Italy to develop transcultural mediation tools to increase accessibility, diversity, and inclusion, and sustainability in art education. Her writing has been published by Mousse, Frieze, Art in America, and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) among others.

Miriam Wistreich
Director of UKS
6–11 April

Miriam Wistreich is the director of UKS – (Unge Kunstneres Samfund / Young Artists’ Society),  an Oslo-based institution for contemporary art and a Norwegian membership organization. Founded by artists for artists in 1921, UKS has since established itself as one of Norway’s core experimental venues for the arts; convening, exhibiting, and supporting critical voices of contemporary artists, with the objective of having both an artistic and political impact within and beyond its region. 

Wistreich’s current interests revolve around questions of infrastructure; how to build and sustain spaces that promote more caring and equal spaces and institutions. She was previously Creative Director at Hotel Maria Kapel, an artist-in-residence and exhibition space in the town of Hoorn, NL. As part of the Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology, a curatorial platform for planetary becoming, she co-curated the 2020 biennial Alt_Cph: Patterns in Resistance in Copenhagen, DK. She is an alumnus of De Appel Curatorial Programme and has previously worked with organisations such as I Can’t Dance I Don’t Want to be Part of Your Revolution and the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, NL, SMK – National Gallery of Denmark, and Louisiana Museum of Modern art, DK.

Leif Magne Tangen
Curator and Director of Tromsø Kunstforening
5–10 April

Leif Magne Tangen 

… is born 1978 in Reine in Lofoten, currently lives and works in Tromsø/Romsa

… is a curator, producer, and writer specialised in Artists’ Moving Image

… has co-established initiatives such as; screening series and minifestival Reihe Experimentalfilm/Avantgard ist Keine Strömung (2006), kunstverein D21 Kunstraum Leipzig (2006), film production company vitakuben (2011)

… has held positions such as; artistic director of D21, Leipzig (2006-07), European director of PIEROGI, Leipzig (2007-08), director of Fotogalleriet, Oslo (2009–10), co-director of independent video rental and archive  Filmgalerie Alpha60 (2010–15)

… co-wrote the science fiction novel PHILIP with Mark Aerial Waller, Cosmin Costinas, Rosemary Heather, Francis McKee, David Reinfurt, Steve Rushton, Heman Chong (2007)… Since May 2014 Tangen holds the position of Intendant at Tromsø Kunstforening

Camilla Fagerli
Independent curator
5–10 April

Camilla Fagerli (b. 1986, Vefsn) is an artist and curator based in Tromsø. She was educated at Nordland Art and Film School in Kabelvåg, at Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art, and at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen. Between 2012 and 2016 she co-ran the artist-run space Kurant. 

Her practice most often involves working collaboratively and in collectives, and has, for the past few years, been driven by questions connected to how we can redefine societal and institutional structures in a direction that better uphold the democratic values that we like to claim we have.

In 2022 Dream Academy will be released, an anthology book that she edited alongside artist Henrik Sørlid. Expanding from the founding of Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art, the book offers a closer insight into the ideas and processes which lay behind the establishment of art education in North Norway and Sápmi and discusses the social role and future of such institutions.

Syaheedah Iskandar
Independent curator
HICP residency in April

Syaheedah Iskandar is a curator based in Singapore. She works with vernacular ideas of seeing, thinking, and being. Drawing from Southeast Asia’s visual culture(s), her interest considers entanglements between the unseen, the hypervisual, and their translations from material to new media practices. Recent projects include Between the Living and the Archive (2021), State of Motion: [Alternate/Opt] Realities (2021), and An Exercise of Meaning in a Glitch Season (2020). Syaheedah was the inaugural Emerging Writers’ Fellow for the academic journal Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia and the IMPART Awards 2020 (Singapore) recipient in recognition for her curatorial practice. She holds an MA in History of Art and Archaeology at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.

Christina Gigliotti
Independent curator
5–9 April

Christina Gigliotti is an American curator and writer living in Berlin. She is an artist liaison at Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler. Since 2015, she has curated over 65 exhibition projects throughout Europe and abroad. Starting summer 2022, she will co-curate the program of Ashley in Berlin. Her writing has been published in a number of publications including magazines, artist books, and catalogues.

Mary Conlon
Independent curator
HICP residency in March

Mary Conlon is a curator based in Limerick, Ireland. She is a Shinnors Scholar and her PhD in Curatorial Studies at Limerick School of Art and Design focuses on Italo Calvino’s Harvard lectures. She is the Founder and Co-Director of Ormston House (est. 2011), a cultural resource centre in the heart of the city where she has produced 65 exhibitions and multidisciplinary projects, working with over 300 artists from 26 countries. 
She is currently Artistic Director of the Creative Europe Project Memory of Water in six post-industrial cities, and co-curator of the Feminist Supermarket, developing the Useful Curating method. Recent projects include The Lore of Water (2019) in partnership with the Municipality of Levadia in Greece, Shipyard (2019) in partnership with the Baltic Sea Cultural Centre in Poland, and The Museum of Mythological Water Beasts (2017, 2018) co-curated with Niamh Brown at Ormston House.

Daría Sól Andrews
Independent curator and art critic
March–April

Daría Sól Andrews works as an independent curator and art critic currently based in Reykjavík, Iceland. In 2021 she will attend the Whitney Independent Study Program as a Curatorial Fellow in New York. She holds an MA in Curating, Art Management, and Law from the University of Stockholm and a BA in Rhetoric from UC Berkeley. 

Most recent curatorial projects include sound and video installation by Ingibjörg Friðriksdóttir “Quite the Situation” as part of the Reykjavik Arts Festival (2021), group exhibition “BLINDSPOT” at the Reykjavík City Library (2021), and the group exhibition “Norðrið” at LÁ Art Museum (2020). Further recent projects include group exhibition “Silent Spring” at Hafnarborg Museum (2020), “Latent Shadow” project series at Harbinger gallery (2020-2021), “Icelandic Meat Soup” at the Reykjavík Museum of Photography, alongside various curatorial projects in San Francisco, Reykjavik, and Stockholm.

In 2017 Daria founded her home gallery as curatorial director of Studio Sol, where she renovated a warehouse building and presents exhibitions in a living room, home-based setting. Daria aspires to create a place where life and art merge, to construct a space for experiencing intimacy and quietness, with art, yourself, and others. Her curatorial practice is inspired by ideas of rethinking how, where, and in what form, the exhibition concept can be manifested.

Daria’s visit was organised in collaboration with Titanik Gallery.