It is with great excitement and pride that WCSCD announces the curators, artists, and other cultural practitioners who will be attending WCSCD 2020/21 program. WCSCD 2020 program has been originally planned to start in august 2020 but due to Covid 19 has been postponed for march 2021
Idil Bozkurt (1990) is a lens-based media producer and an independent curator. Also, She is the co-founder of the art collective, New Grounds. After her bachelor’s degree (2008-2012) in Philosophy from Kocaeli University in Turkey, she travelled to the UK and completed her Masters (2015-2016) in Film Studies at Sussex University. She works with various mediums such as video, photography and digital art. Her practical work combines two mediums, photography, and video, fusing the two to speculate the dissemination of the digital realm and how media is brought about and created by digital technologies. Alongside her practical work, Idil has curated various exhibitions such as; New Grounds (AOH, Brighton, 2018), Conjecture (Brighton Photo Fringe, Brighton, 2018), Fake/Make (New Grounds, Brighton and Falmer, 2019), Hidden Paths (Systems Change HIVE, UK, 2019-ongoing), Body/Nobody (AOH, Brighton, upcoming). Currently, she works and lives in the UK.
Róisín McQueirns is a freelance curator, producer, artist manager and consultant based in London.
Previously working at Richard Saltoun Gallery, she worked closely with pioneering feminist artists including Eleanor Antin, Renate Bertlmann and Annegret Soltau and the Estates of Helen Chadwick, Alexis Hunter and Jo Spence. Prior to this she spent 6 years with Simon Lee Gallery, working with artists such as Angela Bulloch, Merlin Carpenter, Matias Faldbakken, Jim Shaw, Josephine Pryde and Marnie Weber.
She has worked on commercial and institutional exhibitions worldwide, including, Get Up Stand Up Now: Generations of Black Pioneers, Somerset House, London (2019); Zak Ové: The Invisible Man and The Masque of Blackness, LACMA (2019); Alexis Hunter: Sexual Warfare, CCA Goldsmiths, London, (2018); Misbehaving Bodies: Jo Spence/Oreet Ashery, Wellcome Collection, London, (2019); Josephine Pryde, Turner Prize, Tate Britain (2016) and Heimo Zobernig, Austrian Pavilion, the 56th International Art Exhibition, Venice Biennale, 2015.
She is the editor of Richard Saltoun Gallery publications Radical Feminism (2018) and Helen Chadwick (2017), amongst others, and the co-curator of a ~brook, an evolving video programme designed to promote artists’ video work across borders, and recently curated ‘Adam Lewis Jacob – Crud Love’ at Peak, London (2020).
Madina Gasimi is a curator and cultural project manager based in Moscow, Russia. Her work is dedicated to contemporary art and cultural projects in galleries located in the most deprived areas of the city. She is specialised in the issue of developing relations between art and people of all ages from these areas and engaging them in gallery spaces.
As an assistant and coordinator, she worked on the exhibition The Snail’s Trail (2016) by Viktor Pivovarov and a course of lectures called «The Family Tree of Russian Contemporary Art» (2015) at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. She was an author and curator of the documentary film program Mirror for the Hero (2017) at The State Central Film Museum. The program focused on discussing the problems of LGBT, feminism and social inequality in Russian society. She has organized local people to develop a long-term exhibition project titled Participant (2016-2018) at the Bogorodskoye Gallery. This exhibition and project raised issues of openness and inclusiveness of art spaces. Madina has curated the personal exhibitions of underground Russian artists from Siberia and the Ural region. The most significant exhibition was Letov. Vinyl Art Covers (2020). The project is an opportunity to see the phenomenon of conceptualism in Russian culture through art works of the outstanding underground poet and musician Yegor Letov.
She is now working on a multidisciplinary online project, Migrantowards, dedicated to the problems of migration and refugees through references in contemporary culture including art, cinema, literature and music.
Katelynn Dunn is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice is based on understanding philosophies of experience and image, patterns in society and the human psyche, artist process, power structures and systems and language. Her practice includes photography, drawing with charcoal and oil paint, silkscreen printing and writing. Previously she was a panel member for the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities (2017) and supported Transformer DC in their annual art auction (2018). She has written for Whitehot Magazine, Mixmag and currently works as a Gallery Assistant at Van Der Plas Gallery in NYC. In the Fall of 2020, she will begin studying at the School of Visual Arts in the program for MA Curatorial Practice
Devashish Sharma has a BFA in Painting from the Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda, and an MFA from the Shiv Nadar University, Greater Noida. After completing his MFA, he joined the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA), New Delhi as a trainee, and was part of the team responsible for the physical verification and documentation of the art collection. In 2017, he received the Public Art Grant from the Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art (FICA), New Delhi and was able to pursue his interest in setting up a museum for the children of the villages of Kumharpara and Balengapara, Chattisgarh. The Museum of Questions and Imagined Futures is a space for children to think about the future of history in a rural context. Research on architecture and landscapes is a key part of his practice, and in 2019 through a grant funded by the Max Mueller Bhavan, New Delhi he was able to initiate Road Number Zero, a research project that explores the cusp between rural and urban landscapes within India. His practice revolves around the ideas of bodily experience and movement, and the politics of curating. Devashish is currently based in Bangalore.
Anne Bourrassé is an independent curator, fostering the interactions between visual arts and humanities. She defines new exhibitions formats conceived as experiences, frameworks for exchanges and encounters. Concerned with current societal issues, she advocates a committed and
inclusive approach to curating. She leads artistic projects. She is programmer of the exhibition spaces Le Huit (2014-2015), and Squaresquaresquare (2017-2018) in Paris. In 2015, she co-founds Label Famille, a creation label composed of 40 artists and designers gathered to think and design in a multidisciplinary way. Since 2019, she cofounds and presides over the non-profit organisation Contemporaines which represent and support women artists. She writes for contemporary art magazines and exhibitions. She is a finalist for the « Entreprendre dans la Culture » prize awarded by the French Ministry of Culture in 2019. She taught at the Research Centre of Sciences Po Paris in 2017. She graduated from Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs de Paris (2015), PSL-Research University (2016), and Sciences Po Paris (2017) and studied at Cornell University, USA (2013). She is based in Paris.
Nathalie Encarnacion (b. 1994, New York) is a conceptual researcher working within the realms of media, writing, discussion, exhibition and art making. Their curatorial practice examines the overlaps between materials and the aesthetics of decolonization, belonging, and identity in North America. Nathalie is currently in Denmark on a curatorial research grant awarded by the Danish Arts Council.
Giulia Menegale (1995) is an Italian-based curator, writer and researcher. She is particularly interested in the organization of discursive events – such as collective reading groups and symposia- in order to explore questions related to identity, socio-political theory and critical pedagogies. She uses her social media account to curate #theBIGquestions series: a number of posts which aim to focus the user’s attention on questions connected to the production of knowledges and the definition of art practices.
In 2020, she graduated in Contemporary Art Theory at Goldsmiths, University of London, and she received the England Art Council Project Grant for the realization of the show, Lilies in the headlights.
Beatrice Rubio-Gabriel is an independent curator, writer and performance artist based in Naarm/Melbourne. She finished a double-degree BA in Art History and Theory alongside a BFA from the Monash University School of Art, Design and Architecture, and was the recipient of the BAHCxMUMA Curatorial award at the MADANOW19 exhibition. Centring around a collaborative and experimental practice, she has curated projects that aim to challenge current curatorial and euro-centric modes of exhibiting, and experiments with writing as artform.
Her curated projects include /dis/location, MPavilion, Melbourne (2019); The Art of Consumption and The Answers You Need Are Right Where You Are, Intermission Gallery, Melbourne (2019); Revisiting the Quadriennale, CareOf Facility, Milan (2018) and Dwelling Inbetween Here and Some Other Place, Monash Prato Centre, Prato (2018).
The former artistic director of Intermission Gallery, she is now currently researching systems of care and intersectional spaces of Resistance Aesthetics. She is also exploring the Baybayin script of the Philippines as a gateway for cultural understanding and re-connection, and how this may be engaged through performance and mark-making.
Christophe Barbeau
Following a BFA in Quebec City at Université Laval, Christophe Barbeau completed the Master of Visual Studies, Curatorial Studies, at the University of Toronto, Canada, during which his research looked for a political understanding of the position of the “curator” through a specific concept of “authorship”.
His projects, as an artist and a curator, have been presented in different group and solo exhibitions in Quebec City, Montreal, Rouyn Noranda, Toronto, Boston, and Nice. Notably : The Die Has Been Cast (2014 Villa Arson, Nice), dans la petite galerie. […] (2014, L’Oeil de Poisson, Quebec City), Dans ce cas-ci (si), […] (2015, Quebec City), Dans le but de décentraliser […] (2016, L’Écart, Rouyn Noranda). In this first stage of projects, the research focused on developing artist’s curated situations of exhibitions where a curatorial strategy was embedded within an artistic practice, specifically through display structures as well as employing strategies of copies, re-makes, re-enactments.
Barbeau’s latest exhibitions were entitled : «Qu’avons- nous fait? […] (2019) presented in Toronto; and «and I am the curator of this show1» (2018) presented at the Art Museum University of Toronto in 2018. In this stage of projects, the focus was redirected towards the power relationship specific to the position of the curator, through the use of institutional critique and self-reflexive curatorial gestures, the projects were aiming at deconstructing the conventional and naturalized authorities of the curator, uncovering the political challenges that this figure is facing.
Tīna Pētersone is an independent curator and a freelance writer based in Riga/London. She currently studies MFA in Curating at Goldsmiths, University of London. In 2017 she finished a BSc in Communication Science from the University of Latvia and spent an exchange semester at Zeppelin University studying BA in Communication & Cultural Management.
Tīna is a member of youth programme Z101 at Zuzeum Art Centre in Riga, Latvia. She was appointed as the first curator-participant at Biennale de la Jeune Création Européenne — a travelling group exhibit hosted alternately for one month by each of its seven partner countries.
Tīna’s current interests revolve around human geography, the prism of otherness, post-Soviet aesthetic, state of in-betweenness, contemporary hedonism. In her research she focuses on durational, performative, ephemeral practices, exploring new ways of connecting the artist and the audience in the present moment.
NELLYA DZHAMANBAEVA
Nellya is an artist, art manager, and curator from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. She graduated from ArtEast School of Contemporary Art (Kyrgyzstan). Studied at the Leadership Program for Art-Managers by CEC Arts-Link in the USA and took part in Academy for Art Managers by Goethe Institute (Uzbekistan and Germany). She is the director of the Capacity Building Foundation that focused on the promotion of art and education. Since 2010, she curates exhibitions and educational projects in the field of contemporary art, film and music. Among her projects are Trash-festival, Trash-festival II, First Youth Central Asian exhibition of Contemporary art in Bishkek “Vkl/Vykl,” Live Cinema, Cinema Camp, Advertisement Break, Eco Bashtyk, Future Shorts Festival, Global Art and Music Festival “Kol Fest”.
Nellya participated as an artist in a number of the exhibitions: Bishkek Design Festival (award in nomination “Mother of glamour”); First of April Contemporary Art Competition “Advertisement break” (won the prize place, group work); First of April Contemporary Art Competition “In context” (award in nomination “In context” , group work). She took part in the exhibitions: Open Museum by Electromuseum (Moscow), Broadway Rebirth; Ecology of Life; First of April Contemporary Art Competition “Self- educator KG”; Art Positive; Week of Francophone. Art-experiment “Eifel Tower in all views”; 4th Bishkek International contemporary art exhibition “Bum Bum”; International contemporary art exhibition “Post for Kyrgyzstan.” One of the group art works called “Escape from freedom” presented in Gwangju Biennale (South Korea).
Bishkek City Hall awarded Nellya for the Distinguished Service.
Yana Gaponenko (born 1988) – curator, lives and works in Vladivostok, Russia. Holds MA in Philosophy, studied at Salzburg Summer Academy of Fine Arts, V-A-C Moscow curatorial summer school, had an internship as a curator at Witte de With CCA (Rotterdam). In 2015 founded Vladivostok school of contemporary art (vsca.ru) – a self-organized platform for an
alternative art education and research, which in 2019 was awarded with a state Innovation art prize. Since 2011 co-curated several formats of art and educational programs: short-term curatorial schools (Goethe Institute, 2019-2020), Digital art MA program (FEFU, 2019),
artist-in-residence program (Zarya CCA, 2014-2015) and an open artist studio (Aidan Salakhova, 2011-2013). Works as an independent curator and researcher with an interest in knowledge production. Now coordinates an educational program for art managers as an employee of State Tretyakov gallery in Vladivostok.
Giulia Cordin is currently working at the Faculty of Design and Art of the Free University of Bozen (Italy) as adjunct lecturer in Visual Communication and she is a Ph.D. Candidate at the Interface Cultures Program at the University of Art and Design in Linz (Austria) with a research project on the exhibition visitor as a cultural producer. Since 2018 she in the editorial board of Progetto Grafico, the leading Italian magazine on graphic design culture.
www.giuliacordin.com
Asli Samadova
Milan/Berlin/Baku-based curator and museum specialist experienced working with leading cultural institutions in Europe and USA on cultural diplomacy, education and exhibition projects (V&A Museum, UK; GWU Textile Museum and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, USA; Museum of Islamic Art, Berlin, Germany; Pinacoteca di Brera, Italy; National Academy of Sciences, Italy, UNESCO, Goethe-Institut, etc.). Founder of Ta(r)dino 6 alternative art space that promotes contemporary art from Azerbaijan and beyond.
Anna Mikaela Ekstrand is a Swedish/Guyanese independent curator based in New York City. She is interested in feminism, decolonial theory, and social practice. Anna Mikaela served as co-/curator for ’Is This Intimacy?’ (Krinzinger Projekte, 2019) and the performance art events ‘Tales Of Tales’ (106 Rivington, 2018), ’Grebnellaw: Sperming The Planet’ (House of Yes and The Oculus, 2018), and ‘Your Decolonizing Toolkit’ (MAW, 2016). Currently, Anna Mikaela serves as advising and co-curator for the inaugural ‘The Immigrant Artist Biennial.’ She has contributed with an essay on performance art(ists) forthcoming in ‘Institution is Verb: PPL Lab Site 2012-2018’ (The Operating System), and she was a curatorial resident at Curator’s Agenda: Vienna in 2019.
Anna Mikaela is also the founding editor-in-chief of Cultbytes.
Dorota Michalska is a contemporary art historian, art critic and (sometimes) curator. She holds an MA in Culture Studies from the University of Warsaw, Poland and a MA in Art History from The Courtauld Institute of Art, London. Currently, she is writing her PhD dissertation at the University of Oxford which aims to outline a transnational and decolonial perspective of contemporary Polish art which would position it in relation to the modernity/coloniality division. Her writings have appeared in ArtMargins Online, Afterall, Flash Art, Calvert Journal among others.
Between 2013 and 2015, Dorota was an Assistant Researcher at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. In 2016, she was selected as a Curatorial Fellow at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, Italy. Her exhibition projects include Passo Dopo Passo (Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Italy, 2016), The Shape Left by The Body (Sunday Painter, London, 2018), Through the Ribs (Galeria SKALA, Poznań, 2020), and Return to the Future, Biennale Zielona Góra (upcoming in fall 2020).