Curators: Notes for tomorrow

Veronica Cordeiro

Veronica Cordeiro is a Brazilian artist, curator and writer based in Montevideo, Uruguay. Constantly exploring the possibilities of art as an agent and platform of growth and transformation, in the last twenty years Veronica has organised countless projects in several countries where art, exhibition, personal experience, conversations, inter-disciplinary debates, educational platforms and institutional commissions have been pushed from their conventional settings in order to open up new forms of knowledge and experience. She began her curatorial training at the 24th Bienal de São Paulo (Antropofagia, 1998) and after completing an MA in Visual Anthropology in London in 2008 and starting a PhD as an ethnographic artist and researcher, she moved to Uruguay in 2009 where she the ongoing project Curating in Context, the monthly live art critique sessions called Plato Crítico, courses in curatorial practice and the creative process, experimental art residencies and shows, etc. In 2013 Veronica created the curatorial department of the Centro de Fotografía de Montevideo (CdF) and developed the new international photography festival MUFF (Montevideo Uruguay Festival de Fotografía). In 2018, she left CdF to concentrate on Procesual, a year-long creative processes laboratory that offers an innovative methodology to art-making, understanding the artistic process as a vital force of creation in its intrinsic relationship with life itself. In 2019, Veronica launched a textile design project that seeks to revitalize and support ancestral weaving techniques which are becoming obsolete in many Latin American regions through innovative design, adding value to local craftsmanship and empowering traditional communities.

Allison Glenn

Allison M. Glenn is Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, where she shapes how outdoor sculpture activates and engages the museum’s 120-acre campus. She was a member of the curatorial team for State of the Art 2020, a quinquennial exhibition that opened simultaneously at the Momentary and Crystal Bridges; and spearheaded the adaptation of Hank Willis Thomas: All Things Being Equal… (2020) at Crystal Bridges, organized by the Portland Art Museum. Prior to this, Glenn was Manager of Publications and Curatorial Associate for Prospect New Orleans’ international art triennial Prospect.4: The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp. Glenn’s writing has been featured in exhibition publications produced by The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Kemper Museum of Art, Prospect New Orleans, DePaul Art Museum, Rebuild Foundation, the California African American Museum, University at Buffalo Art Galleries, and The Studio Museum in Harlem. She has contributed to Hyperallergic, ART21 Magazine, ART PAPERS, Pelican Bomb’s Art Review, and Newcity, among others.

Tessa Maria Guazon

Tessa Maria Guazon is a curator and educator based in Manila. She developed the proposal for the Southeast Asia Neighbourhood Network during the ICI workshop in Manila. This is a research project with women artists Alma Quinto and Nathalie Dagmang with pedagogy as a central goal. She is part of the interlocutor program for the 10th Asia Pacific Triennial organized by the Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, Australia. She is the coordinator for Exhibitions and Curatorial Analysis for the Philippine Contemporary Art Network. Her current project for the network considers curation and curating as collectivist practices. In 2019, she launched Curating in Local Contexts workshops with colleagues Louise Salas and Mayumi Hirano. The workshops aim to understand how curation is practiced in the Philippines, within specific conditions of possibilities and constraints.

PJ Gubatina Policarpio

PJ Gubatina Policarpio is an educator, curator, programmer, writer, and community organizer. He is the Manager of Youth Development at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (de Young Museum / Legion of Honor) where he designs and implements dynamic and relevant youth programming, especially addressing a diverse, multilingual, and multicultural audience. PJ’s thought leadership in museum education, youth development, and arts administration has advanced institutions such as The Contemporary Jewish Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Queens Museum, and The Museum of Modern Art. He has presented at conferences nationally including the American Alliance of Museums (New Orleans, Washington DC), College Art Association (Los Angeles), and National Art Education Association (New York City). He has delivered keynotes, lectures, and participated in panel discussions at California College of the Arts, Maryland Institute College of Art, University of California at Berkeley, New York Art Book Fair, Cooper Hewitt, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Parsons School of Design, University of Illinois at Chicago, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts and more. He has organized readings, exhibitions, publications, and public programming at Southern Exposure, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Asian Art Museum, Dixon Place, NURTUREart, and other unnameable spaces. PJ is co-founder of Pilipinx American Library (PAL), an itinerant collection and programming platform dedicated exclusively to diasporic Filipinx perspectives. He serves on Southern Exposure’s Curatorial Council and SOMA Pilipinas Cultural District’s Arts and Culture Committee.

Ivan Isaev

Ivan Isaev (1986) is an independent curator, based in Moscow.  He currently serves as the Curator of Garage Studios, Garage MCA in Moscow. He was the Curator-in-residence at Ausstellungsraum Klingental, Basel, in 2018. Previous projects have included, co-initating theplatform blind_spot in 2017. co-founding «Triangle» curatorial studios in Moscow. from 2014-2016, as well as a participating in the Infra-Curatorial Platform at 11th Shanghai Biennale in 2016.  He has also served as the Curator of platform Start, Winzavod, from 2014-2015, and curated the exhibition “Leaving Tomorrow”.  He is a Curatorial Intensive Alumni, participating in the Moscow Intensive in 2014.

Ross Jordan

Ross Jordan is Curatorial Manager at the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum in Chicago, IL. He is a curator interested in the confluence of American politics, visual culture, and artistic production. Since coming to Chicago in 2010, first as a graduate student and then as a full-time staff member of SAIC’s Department of Exhibitions and Exhibitions Studies, Ross expanded curricular exhibitions on the campus and transformed graduate and undergraduate led exhibitions and programs into research driven and collaborative experiences. Ross also made himself a vital presence in Chicago’s art community curating six independent exhibitions over the last five years in several of Chicago’s tenacious arts venues. Previously, Ross was a 12-month intern in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art where he was a contributor to the museum’s blog Inside/Out and provided research support for exhibitions including Lee Bontecou: All Freedom in Every Sense (2010), Diego Rivera: Murals for The Museum of Modern Art (2011) and Abstract Expressionist New York (2011). Ross is the recipient of the Studio Art Fellowship, Trinity College; the Graduate Curatorial Fellowship, SAIC; a 2015 ACRE Curatorial Fellowship; and was a 2014/15 inaugural curator-in-residence at the Chicago Cultural Center. He holds a Bachelors of Arts in Studio Arts from Connecticut College and dual Masters Degrees in Art History and Arts Administration and Policy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Drew Kahuʻāina Broderick

Drew Kahuʻāina Broderick is an artist, independent curator, and community educator from Mōkapu, Kailua, Koʻolaupoko, Oʻahu. Currently, he serves as Director of Koa Gallery at Kapiʻolani Community College. Previously, he was a contributing member of Hawaiʻi-based collective PARADISE COVE (2015-2018), operated SPF Projects (2012-2016) an artist-run initiative dedicated to building capacity for contemporary art in Honolulu, and co-founded an annual open call thematic exhibition, CONTACT (2014-present). Recent and forthcoming projects include Transits and Returns (2019), co-developed by Sarah Biscarra Dilley, Freja Carmichael, Léuli Lunaʻi Eshrāghi, Tarah Hogue, Lana Lopesi for the Vancouver Art Gallery; Mai hoʻohuli i ka lima i luna (2020), co-curated with Kaʻili Chun and Kapulani Landgraf for the Hawaiʻi State Art Museum, and Revisiting Kealakekua Bay, Reworking the Captain Cook Monument (2021), a speculative group endeavor presenting unrealized interventionist proposals. Drew holds an MA from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, New York, and a BA in Biology and Studio Art from Wesleyan University, Connecticut.

Josh Tengan

Josh Tengan is a Honolulu-based contemporary art curator. He was the assistant curator of the second Honolulu Biennial 2019, To Make Wrong / Right / Now. Since 2015, he has worked with Native Hawaiian and Hawaiʻi-based artists and cultural practitioners, through the arts non-profit Puʻuhonua Society, to deliver Hawaiʻi’s largest annual thematic contemporary art exhibition, CONTACT, which offers a critical and comprehensive survey of local contemporary visual culture. In 2019, he curated CONTACT, Acts of Faith, presented at the Hawaiian Mission Houses Historic Site and Archive, which explored the role of religion in the colonization of Hawaiʻi through artistic interventions in the historic collections and an artist book library. He holds a Curatorial Studies M.A. with Distinction from Newcastle University (UK) and a B.A. in Fine Art from Westmont College.

Esteban King Álvarez

Esteban King Álvarez (México City, 1986) is researcher, art historian and curator. He holds a BA in History and a MA in Art History from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). His work focuses on modern and contemporary art and its relationships with music and literature. He has developed projects that interwove sound, archive and writing from the perspective of art history and contemporary art. He has written several articles in books and art catalogues, among others: “Strindentism and Urban Imaginaries” for the catalogue Avant-garde in Mexico, 1915-1940 (National Museum of Art, 2013); “New narrative strategies: the works of Salvador Elizondo” for the catalogue Defying stability: artistic processes in Mexico, 1952-1967 (MUAC, 2014) and “Sonorama. Art and technology from hi-fi to MP3” for the catalogue Sonorama (Museo Universitario del Chopo, 2014). He is curator of the collective exhibitions Transcripciones (Museo Universitario del Chopo, 2014), Una red de líneas que se intersecan (ESPAC, 2016) and La nueva onda del silencio (El cuarto de máquinas, 2017), among many others. From 2012 to 2015 he was curator and chief researcher at the Museo Universitario del Chopo, and from 2015 to 2019 curator and editor at ESPAC, Espacio de Arte Contemporáneo. He’s currently studying a PHD on Art History at UNAM, is part of the curatorial team of the XIV Bienal FEMSA Inestimable Azar, and works as a freelance writer.

João Laia

João Laia is the chief curator for exhibitions at Kiasma – National Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki. Recent projects include Masks (2020) and 10000 Years Later Between Venus and Mars (2017-18) at Oporto City Hall Gallery; In Free Fall (2019), CaixaForum, Barcelona; Vanishing Point (2019) at Cordoaria Nacional, Lisbon; Drowning in a sea of Data (2019) and Transmissions from the Etherspace (2017) at La Casa Encendida, Madrid; foreign bodies (2018) at P420, Bologna; H Y P E R C O N N E C T E D (2016) at MMOMA – Moscow Museum of Modern Art; Hybridize or Disappear (2015) at MNAC – National Museum of Contemporary Art in Lisbon. Laia co-curated the 19th and 20th editions of Videobrasil (2014–18) in São Paulo. Other exhibitions, performance programs and screenings were held at Parque Lage (Rio de Janeiro) Moderna Museet (Stockholm), Xcèntric / CCCB (Barcelona), Videoex (Zürich), Calouste Gulben, Kurzfilmtage – International Short Film Festival Oberhausen and Cell Project Space, DRAF – David Roberts Art Foundation, Delfina Foundation, South London Gallery and Whitechapel Gallery (all in London). In 2012-13 Laia attended the post-graduate research program CuratorLab at Konstfack, Stockhom and in 2014 was part of the curatorial residency of Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin. He edited A Multiple Community (SESC publishing — São Paulo, 2018), co-edited Daniel Steegmann Mangrané’s monograph Spiral Forest (Mousse — Milano, 2018) and published in magazines such as Flash Art, frieze, Mousse, Spike or Terremoto. In 2021 together with Valentinas Klimašauskas, Laia will curate the 14th edition of the Baltic Triennial at the CAC – Contemporary Art Center in Vilnius.

Luis Carlos Manjarrés Martínez

Luis Carlos Manjarrés Martínez is currently the curator at the Queer Museum and Maloka Interactive Center in Bogotá, Colombia. In 2018 he was part of the curatorial team of the exhibition of Voices to Transform Colombia. This exhibition aimed to address the enormous challenge of recounting the Colombian armed conflict, starting from the perspective of its victims; Voices is for the long-run script of the Museum of Historical Memory of Colombia on the armed conflict and peace. In the last five years, he has curated four art exhibitions on sexuality, sex, sexual diversity and gender expression with the MuseoQ, a museological initiative to make visible that makes visualized stories and memories related to identity and gender expression as well as the non-hegemonic sexualities and orientations, as an essential part of the national story. In addition to this, he participated in 2015 in the creation of the Thinking Center for the Arts and the Social Agreement of the Faculty of Arts of the National University of Colombia and served as the public coordinator of the Ephemeral Museum of Oblivion in the National Salon of Artists of 2015.

Fadzai Veronica Muchemwa

Fadzai Veronica Muchemwa is a researcher, writer and curator from Harare, Zimbabwe. Currently, she is a Masters researcher in the Arts of Africa and Global Souths research programme in the Fine Art Department at Rhodes University. Her research explores new communities of protest and transgression, histories of cities, topographies of knowledge production and sites of transition. She was Curator for Education and Public Programming at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe from 2017-2020, and Assistant Curator from 2016-2017, where she co-curated Moulding a Nation: The History of the Ceramics Collection of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe (2018–2019), Dis (colour)ed Margins (2017), Culture in Communities (2016), and Jazzified: Expressions of Protest (2016). In addition, she curated The Unseen: Creatures of Myth and Legend, an exhibition of artworks by Isaac Kalambata at the Lusaka National Museum in 2018. As visiting curator at the Bag Factory in Johannesburg in 2019, she produced the publication Curating Johannesburg: rest.less, under siege/in transition. Muchemwa is a 2017 fellow of the International Training Programme at the British Museum. She is a collaborator for Independent Curators International and the Zimbabwe Pavilion at the International Art Exhibition in Venice

Lydia Y. Nichols

Lydia Y. Nichols is a native New Orleanian cultural critic and arts administrator. Her work centers the lived experiences of Africans in the Diaspora and prioritizes community accessibility. Lydia’s essays have appeared in Pelican Bomb, Liberator Magazine, Gathering of the Tribes Magazine, and The Killens Review. As co-curator of street art exhibition and Prospect P.3+ site ExhibitBE, Lydia researched and documented the history of the blighted apartment complex in which the work was created to guide the curatorial process, managed community programming and daily operations, and, after the exhibition closed, coordinated the #PaintWhereItAint Tour through which several ExhibitBE artists traveled across the southwest United States to collaborate with artists in other cities on community-centered public art projects. Since, Lydia has created “In/Between Spaces” - a mobile group exhibition series in a 26’ U-Haul that explores Black identity in various spheres of modern life and that travels to predominantly Black neighborhoods in New Orleans to engage those who have been alienated from the world of contemporary fine art. Lydia continues to manage production for artist Brandan “Bmike” Odums, including his first solo exhibition “Ephemeral Eternal” at Studio Be and, in collaboration with Welcome Table New Orleans, the Algiers Oral History and Public Art Intensive through which 24 high school youth are creating a freestanding mural based on interviews they conduct with elders on the evolution of race relations.

Marie Hélène Pereira

Marie Hélène Pereira graduated in Management and International Business Law. After a few years of work within the business world, she shifted her professional interest to arts and culture. She is Director of Programmes at RAW Material Company where she has organized a dozen of exhibitions and related discursive programs including the participation of RAW Material Company to “We face forward: Art from West Africa Today” Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester; ICI Curatorial Hub at TEMP, New York; The 9th Shanghai Biennial, Shanghai; MARKER Art Dubai (2013). She co-curated Scattered Seeds in Cali-Colombia (2015-2017) and curated Battling to normalize freedom at Clarkhouse Initiative in Mumbai, India (2017). Pereira was a co-curator of Canine Wisdom for the Barking Dog - The Dog Done Gone Deaf. Exploring The Sonic Cosmologies of Halim El-Dabh with Dr. Bonaventure Ndikung at the 13th edition of Dakar Biennale of Contemporary African art (2018). She has a strong interest in politics of identity and histories of migration.

Balimunsi Philip

Born of Kabuye Benedict family, Balimunsi Philip is the curator of Uganda National Cultural Centre and the Uganda National Gallery known as Nommo gallery. His curatorial focus steers towards documentation and shaping the arena of experience to grant viewers a glimpse into an exhibition of memories and a creative mist of conversations. His practice explores the intellectual explosion of artistic quandary in relation to creativity as a social response to human interaction with extremely difficult spheres of life. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Industrial and Fine Arts from Makerere University and received curatorial training from ICI’s Curatorial Intensive in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and at the School for Curatorial Studies Venice by A Plus Gallery-Venice, Italy during the 2019 58th Venice biennial to pave way for processes of organising a Ugandan pavilion at the Venice Biennial. He is a co-curator of the Know Go Zone, Dance in the City, KLAART014 and a curator of the DADs and Climate Change exhibitions with Embassy of Sweden, JAMAFEST visual arts pavilion with UVADA, Know Way Out with Belgian embassy, Art Creates Water, Hope Art exhibition, a retrospective of 25 years of Bruno Sserunkuuma’s Ceramic Philosophy, and Anecdotes of Origin. He’s previously published articles with Start Journal, ICI, JAMAFEST magazine, and contemporary And.

Josseline Pinto

Josseline Pinto (1996, Guatemala) is an independent curator, educator and poet based in Guatemala City. Co-founder and director of the independent space MANIFESTO-espacio. She is currently an educational curator for Fundación Nacional para las Bellas Artes y la Cultura FUNBA. He also teaches Art History at La Fototeca and at the Escuela Municipal de Artes Visuales. Previously, she co-coordinated the art education program Laboratorio de Arte Contemporáneo at Fundación Paiz. Her essays are published in the book “Darío Escobar Ensayos Dispersos” (2019) and “Agentes Culturales” (2016), as well as in magazines such as Arte al Día, Artishock, Revista Gimnasia and esQuisses. She’s also written for independent projects such as Residencia Chichicaste and the 20 Bienal de Arte Paiz catalogue. She’s worked before as assistant for curator Alma Ruiz during the 20Bienal and in galleries such as The 9.99 Gallery and Proyectos Ultravioleta. Her recent curatorial projects include: Ernesto Bautista: “Un vacío infinito llenándose con la memoria” at Galería Valenzuela Klenner in Bogotá, Colombia (2019), the group show “Después de mí el sueño” at MANIFESTO-espacio (2018); Jason Mena: Victoria sobre el sol (2017), among others. As a poet, she’s also published Objetos1 (2017), Sión Editorial and Cartas Íntimas (2015), Chuleta de Cerdo Editorial; and in anthologies from El Salvador, México and Guatemala. She was selected for the program “Programa de Formación Curatorial” at TEOR/éTica, Costa Rica and for the “Curatorial Intensive Mexico City”, Independent Curators International. She was also part of the 3rd edition of “Escuela de Crítica de Arte”, La Tallera, Cuernavaca, México in 2017. Her work revolves around the study and manifestation of the poetic image and the artistic process as a tool for educational mediation.

Florencia Portocarrero

Florencia Portocarrero (Lima, 1981) writes, lectures, teaches, and, organizes both exhibitions and public programs. Her research interests are focused on how to rewrite art history from a feminist perspective, regimes of subjectivation in the context of neoliberal globalization, and the questioning of hegemonic forms of knowledge. Between 2008 and 2010, she completed a master’s degree in Theoretical Studies in Psychoanalysis at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. Later, from 2012 to 2013, Portocarrero participated in the Curatorial Program of the Appel Arts Center in Amsterdam, and in 2015 she completed a second master’s degree in Contemporary Art Theory at Goldsmiths University in London. She has participated in several international conferences and her writings on art and culture appear regularly in specialized magazines such as Atlántica Journal, Artishock, and Terremoto. In 2017/2018 Portocarrero received the Curating Connections scholarship, awarded by the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program and the KfW Stiftung. In Lima, she worked as a Public Program Curator at Proyecto AMIL (2015-2019) and is a Co-founder of Bisagra.

Shahana Rajani

Shahana Rajani is an artist and curator based in Karachi. Her work and research traces the emerging visualities and infrastructures of development and militarisation using interdisciplinary methods and media. She is a co-founder of Karachi LaJamia, an experimental project seeking to politicise art education and explore new radical pedagogies and art practices. She also has a collaborative publishing practice with Zahra Malkani and Abeera Kamran called Exhausted Geographies that explores the relationship between image, text and the city. She is an Assistant Professor in the Liberal Arts Programme, at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture Karachi.

Rachel Reese

Rachel Jobe Reese is Director and Curator of the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC), the first ICA in the state of TN. From 2015-2019, Reese served as Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at Telfair Museums in Savannah, GA where she organized over 20 special exhibitions, including the recent retrospective and accompanying catalogue for Suzanne Jackson: Five Decades (Telfair Books, 2019). Reese held prior positions at Atlanta Contemporary in Atlanta where she curated Pratfall Tramps (Atlanta Contemporary, 2015) with accompanying catalogue; Fleisher/Ollman Gallery in Philadelphia; and Deitch Projects, Petzel Gallery and Andrew Kreps Gallery in New York. Reese is an alumni of Independent Curators International; was a former editor of Burnaway magazine in Atlanta, and her writing and artist interviews have appeared in BOMB Daily, Temporary Art Review, TWELV Magazine, and Art Papers; she also published a free newsprint of artists’ writings called Possible Press from 2010–15. Reese has taught at PAFA in Philadelphia and Georgia State University in Atlanta, and currently teaches at UTC in the Department of Art. Reese holds an MFA from City College, CUNY, in New York.

Marina Reyes Franco

Marina Reyes Franco is a Curator at the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Puerto Rico (MAC). She received a BA in Art History from the University of Puerto Rico and a MA in Argentine and Latin American Art History at IDAES-UNSAM in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In 2010, she co-founded La Ene, an itinerant museum and collection. Some recent projects include De Loiza a la Loiza, a MAC en el Barrio public art commission by Daniel Lind Ramos; Resisting Paradise, at Publica, San Juan and Fonderie Darling, Montreal; Watch your step / Mind your head, ifa-Galerie Berlin; The 2nd Grand Tropical Biennial in Loiza, Puerto Rico; Caliban, MAC in San Juan; C32: Sucursal, MALBA in Buenos Aires, and numerous exhibitions at La Ene. As curator and researcher, she has focused on the work of Esteban Valdes, artistic and literary manifestations on the frontier of political action, and the impact of tourism in cultural production in the Caribbean. She received the 2017 CPPC Travel Award for Central America and the Caribbean and was nominated for ICl’s 2014 Independent Vision Curatorial Award. Photo credit: Raquel Pérez Puig

Mari Spirito

Mari Spirito is Executive Director and Curator of Protocinema, a cross-cultural, site-aware art organization commissioning and presenting exhibitions and public programs in Istanbul and New York, since 2011. She launched Protocinema’s Emerging Curator Series mentorship program in 2015. In 2020 Spirito was commissioning curator of Ahmet Öğüt: “No poem loves its poet’, Yarat Contemporary Art Center, Baku, and Theo Triantafyllidis’ “Anti-Gone” which premiered at Sundance Film Festival, New Frontier; she curated public talks for Beijing Art Summit, 2019; was faculty for Independent Curators International (ICI) Curatorial Intensive, Bangkok, and guest curator, Alserkal Arts Foundation Public Commission, Dubai, with Hale Tenger, in 2018. From 2013 - 2018 Spirito programed Conversations for both Art Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach; served as International Advisory Committee Member for the Inaugural High Line Plinth Commissions, New York, 2017; was Curator and Director of Alt Art Space, Bomonti, Istanbul from 2015 to 2017; curated “On the Nature of Justice” exhibition and talk for Onassis Cultural Center, 2017, Advisor to the 2nd Mardin Biennial, Turkey, 2012; and Director of 303 Gallery New York, 2000 - 2012. She is on the Board of Participant, Inc, New York, and holds a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art, Boston.

Alexandra Stock

Alexandra Stock is a Swiss/American curator, artist & consultant with over a decade of experience in curatorial practice and arts management in the Middle East. She is the Creative Director of ARCHiNOS, Egypt’s leading architecture, design and conservation firm that operates at the intersections of tangible & intangible cultural heritage and contemporary art & design. She previously held curatorial and/or managerial positions at the Townhouse Gallery and Beirut, both in Cairo, and Al Riwaq Art Space in Bahrain. Stock graduated from the Zurich University of the Arts with a BFA in Art Theory, completed De Appel’s Curatorial Program in Amsterdam and studied Arabic at the DEAC in Cairo. She is a participant of the yearlong Townhouse Curatorial Program and the Townhouse ISP in Cairo, the first initiatives of their kind both offered in and focused on the history & historiography of art in the greater Middle East. For three seasons, Stock represented the MENA region on the International Council advisory board of PBS’s Peabody and Emmy award-winning broadcast program ‘Art in the Twenty-First Century’ and later consulted for the Bahrain Authority for Culture & Antiquities. In addition to her work with ARCHiNOS, Stock is devoting time to graduate studies in Global Diplomacy (with a focus on Cultural Diplomacy) at SOAS and Cultural Economics at Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Eszter Szakács

Eszter Szakács is a curator, editor, and researcher in Budapest. She works at the contemporary art organization tranzit.hu, where she is co-editor of the online international art magazine Mezosfera, co-editor of the book IMAGINATION/IDEA: The Beginning of Hungarian Conceptual Art—The László Beke Collection, 1971 (Budapest, Zurich: tranzit.hu, JRP|Ringier, 2014), and she curated the collaborative research project Curatorial Dictionary, which has been realized in online and offline formats, including being one of the participating projects of ICI’s exhibition Publishing Against the Grain. She was a research group member of the ...OPEN MUSEUM...project initiated by the Museum of Ethnography, Budapest (2014–2018). She is co-editor with Naeem Mohaiemen of the forthcoming anthology Solidarity Must Be Defended (tranzit.hu – Van Abbemuseum – SALT – Tricontinental – Asia Culture Center, 2020). She is a curatorial team member of the civil initiative OFF-Biennale Budapest. Her practice revolves around questions of internationalism, methods of cultural resistance, relations between Eastern Europe and the Global South, as well as the exhibition form of research.

Abhijan Toto

Abhijan Toto is an independent curator and writer, and with Pujita Guha, the co-director of the Forest Curriculum. He has been the Curatorial Assistant to the Artistic Director of the Samdani Art Foundation, and Assistant Curator for the 2018 edition of the Dhaka Art Summit. Previously, he served as the Programs Manager at the Bellas Artes Project, Manila and Project-and-Curatorial Assistant, Council and the Against Nature Journal, Paris, France; the Majlis Cultural Centre, Mumbai, and the Asia Art Archive. He is currently a fellow of the Forecast Platform at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, and has been a fellow of the Tate Research Centre: Asia, at the MMCA, Seoul and researcher-in-residence at the HSLU-University of Applied Arts and Sciences, Luzern Switzerland and at the Tentacles Art Gallery in Bangkok. He is a member of the Chareon Contemporaries collective, based in Bangkok. Selected exhibitions include Occupy Exhaustion, Haus der Welt, Berlin (2018); Postscripts, Bangkok Biennial (with the Chareon Contemporaries Collective) (2018); History Zero, Mumbai Art Room, Mumbai (2017) and is participating in the School of Storytellers, part of Ghost2561, with the Forest Curriculum, and Southern Constellations, Moderna Galleria, Ljubljana (Contributing Curator, 2019). He will participate in the TransCuratorial Academy in Phnom Penh and the Parasite Workshop for Young Curators (2018), and has participated in the Curators‟ Workshop, Kochi Biennial (2016) and Gwangju Biennale (2018). He graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts, MS University of Baroda, India and holds a certificate from the ENSBA, Paris.

Fatoş Üstek

Fatoş Üstek is director of Liverpool Biennial, jury member for Turner Prize 2020, external member of acquisitions committee for Arts Council Collection (2018-2020). She is recipient of curatorial fellowship at Tornabuoni Art, London 2018, curator of Do Ho Suh’s largest commission in the UK (2018-2020), co-commissioned by Art Night and Sculpture in the City. She formerly acted as director and chief curator of DRAF (David Roberts Art Foundation), curator of miart Talks 2018, Milano; Art Night 2017, East London; and fig-2, 50 projects in 50 weeks, 2015, ICA Studio, London. Üstek is contributing editor to Extra Extra, chief-juror for the Celeste Prize 2017. She is founding member of Association of Women in the Arts (AWITA); Art Nights Trustee, member of AICA UK, and ICI Alumni. She curates, lectures and publishes internationally, recently at Sotheby’s, Goldmisths College, RCA and in art magazines such as Mousse, L’Officiel and Camera Austria.

Su Wei

Su Wei is an art writer and curator based in Beijing. His recent work focuses on re-depicting and deepening of the history of Chinese contemporary art, exploring the roots of its legitimacy and rupture. In 2014, he was awarded first place at the first International Awards for Art Criticism (IAAC). He was the Senior Curator of Inside-Out Museum Beijing between 2017 and 2019.

His curatorial projects include: the 7th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale Accidental Message: Art is Not a System, Not a World, OCT Contemporary Art Terminal (OCAT), Shenzhen, 2012; No References: A Revisit of Hong Kong Media and Video Art from 1985 at Videotage, Hong Kong, 2016; Crescent: Retrospectives of Zhao Wenliang and Yang Yushu, The Lonely Spirit and Community of Feeling: Emotional Patterns in Art in Post-1949 China at Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum, 2017-2019, etc. In 2015, he participated in the symposium Dislocations: Remapping Art Histories at Tate Modern, London. He co-curated the symposium Transcultural Research and Curatorial Practice in China’s Contemporary Art at Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art (CFCCA) in Manchester.

He has published a number of articles in local and international art journals including YISHU: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Journal of Contemporary Art (Bristol, UK) and Kunstforum.

Sharmila Wood

Sharmila Wood is the Director of the curatorial initiative JINA. Since 2012 she has worked as a Senior Curator with FORM. Previously, Sharmila has held a plurality of roles, from fostering market access with artisans in India to safeguarding intangible cultural heritage for Aboriginal communities in Australia and developing curatorial place-based strategies for public art projects. She is interested in interdisciplinary approaches to addressing concerns around heritage, environment, social, and spatial justice. Sharmila conceptualises and develops community projects through socially engaged processes, creates installations, collaborates with artists on major commissions, and makes art interventions. Sharmila has a Masters of Art History & Curatorship from the University of Sydney and in 2017 was the recipient of an Asialink residency. She has edited books and writes regularly for publications, and journals, most recently for the Journal of Public Space, and Springer. Currently, she is working on a curatorial project, Actions for the Earth, a participatory platform for ecology, healing, and kindness in response to COVID 19 and the climate emergency. Her long-term curatorial project with Aboriginal artists from the Pilbara region of Western Australia will be presented in 2021.

Notes for Tomorrow is a traveling exhibition organized and produced by Independent Curators International (ICI) and initiated by Frances Wu Giarratano, Becky Nahom, Renaud Proch, and Monica Terrero. The exhibition was made possible with the generous support of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, VIA Art Fund, and ICI’s Board of Trustees and International Forum. 

The presentation at Contemporary Calgary has been organized in collaboration with Chief Curator, Ryan Doherty and Associate Curator, Kanika Anand.