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Curating the International Diaspora was a trans-national, multi-site project that involved working with curators and artists from culturally diverse backgrounds across five countries between March 2016 and March 2017. By attending and participating in events in London, the Caribbean, Sharjah during the Sharjah Biennial and Gwangju during the Gwangju Biennial, a group of arts practitioners were able to experience and engage with some of most relevant projects and professionals addressing contemporary art and curatorial practice, and to network with a global artistic community, thus offering exceptional opportunities for professional development.

Sharjah

Participants: Jaewon Choi, JW Stella, Hyejin Han, Haeju Kim

Dates: 10 – 17 March 2017
Location: Sharjah Biennial, Sharjah, UAE
Format: Field trip (Biennial visit and public programme)

Supported by: University of the Arts London, Arts Council England, Sharjah Art Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies

ICF engaged with a cohort of curators based in South Korea throughout the CTID programme, who traveled to Sharjah for the opening of the 2017 Sharjah Biennial as the last stage of this year-long project. This relationship was facilitated by frequent ICF collaboration JW Stella. They were joined by the ICF’s Beyond the Frame professional development programme participants, thus facilitating a network of exchange between two of ICF’s most ambitious curatorial programmes. 

Sharjah Biennial 13 featured over fifty international artists and involved an ambitious opening programme of performances and lectures by practitioners such as Cooking Sections and Raqs Media Collective, that the group were able to attend. In addition to the Biennial, the group was given a tour of the exhibition Ahmed Morsi: A Dialogic Imagination at the Sharjah Art Museum by the artist and curator Salah Hassan, and met with the team at the Maraya Art Centre.

Curating the International Diaspora participants, Sharjah (2017)
Curating the International Diaspora Participants, Sharjah (2017)

Barbados & Martinique

Participants: Melanie Keen, George Blacklock, Ellen Gallagher, JW Stella, Haeju Kim, Jaewon Choi, Hyejin Han, Jessica Taylor, Mervyn Awon, Sheena Rose, Ewan Atkinson, Ras Ishi Butcher, Mark King, Versia Harris, Ronald Williams, Winston Kellman, Russell Watson, Allison Thompson, Alissandra Cummins, Ernest & Jean-Philippe Breleur, Henri Tauliaut & Annabel Gueredrat, Luc de Laguarigue, Ricardo Ozier Lafontaine and Dominique Brebion. 

Dates: 28 November – 2 December 2016
Location: Multiple sites including museums, galleries, an arts college and artist studios
Format: Field trip (public talks, student crits, studio and exhibition visits)

Supported by: University of the Arts London

Professionals from the UK, the Caribbean and South Korea came together to discuss emerging curatorial issues and to meet with practitioners based in both Barbados and Martinique. While in Barbados, the team group visited the Barbados Museum & Historical Society, Punch Creative Arena, the Barbados Community College and the private collection of Mervyn Awon, and attended studio visits with artists Sheena Rose, Ewan Atkinson, Ras Ishi Butcher, Mark King, Versia Harris, Ronald Williams, Winston Kellman and Russell Watson. While in Martinique, the group visited Foundation Clément, Le Foundres HSE, Tropiques Atrium and Habitation Saint-Etienne, and had studio visits with Ernest & Jean-Philippe Breleur, Henri Tauliaut & Annabel Gueredrat, Luc de Laguarigue and Ricardo Ozier Lafontaine.

Public programming held during the trip included a panel discussion with all of the programme participants at Foundation Clément, open lectures by Melanie Keen and Ellen Gallagher at the Barbados Community College and a critique session with Bachelor of Fine Arts 3rd year students led by George Blacklock and Ellen Gallagher.

Curating the International Diaspora participants at the studio of artist Ernest Breleur, Martinique (2016)
George Blacklock and Ellen Gallagher leading student crits at the Barbados Community College (2016)
Curating the International Diaspora participants at Foundation Clement, Martinique (2016)
Curating the International Diaspora participants visit to the private collection of Mervyn Awon, Barbados (2016)
Melanie Keen presenting to students and educators at the Barbados Community College (2016)

Gwangju

Participants: Sheikha Hoor Bint Sultan Al Qasimi, Jeonhwan Cho, Graeme Mortimer Evelyn, Melanie Keen, Namsoo Kim, Giuseppe Moscatello, Yongsung Paik, Kyong Park, Sara Raza, Judith Greer, JW Stella, Jessica Taylor, Mark Waugh and Jian Jun Xi

Dates: 1 – 2 September 2016
Location: Asia Culture Centre, Gwangju, South Korea
Format: Symposium

Partners: ICF, Asia Culture Centre
Supporters: Arts Council England, Asia Culture Centre and University of the Arts London

Is the Curator an Agent or Double Agent of Cultural Identity? was a symposium which investigated how emergent cultural diasporas have impacted the curatorship of contemporary visual arts specifically and how new models of contemporary curating have developed as a consequence of these effects. The programme sought to demonstrate how curatorial practice has been radically transformed by the diaspora of people, intellectuals, artists, and cultural workers.

For intellectual and cultural diasporas from diverse origins and disciplines, a new kind of curatorial practice has attempted to represent these changes by creating what Ute Meta Bauer has called ‘a space of refuge – an in-between space of transition and of diasporic passage’ for cultural workers across the world.

Whereas increased global mobilities, displacement, and the vast emigration of cultural producers has had a profound effect on contemporary art and curatorial practice for the last three decades, focused research has not been conducted on the impact of these developments.

Similarly, little attempt has been made to understand how curatorial practice in Asia has been influenced by cross-cultural diasporas or how the emergence of a more globalised art world has taken account of these new networks, flows and their dispersal, which increasingly operate at an international, trans-national, multi-national and global level, with the local and global in constant dialogue with one another.

Issues of cultural identity and representation are highly debated topics at the moment. In the current geopolitical and economic circumstances, the world is increasingly facing the rise of ‘nationalism’ as a dominant discourse, often justified as a sense of self-protection of ‘the people’ under an assumed homogenous collective identity against the heterogeneous ‘otherness’. There is growing concern in the international artistic community about censorship and the closing down of public opportunities to engage with international cultures, despite increasing globalization of cultural flows and practices, facilitated by the advent of digital technologies, social media platforms, and the increasing circulation of products and populations.

In celebration of it’s inauguration of the new Asia Culture Centre in Gwangju, South Korea, this symposium – which was curated by JW Stella and Mark Waugh – aimed to explore the role of curatorial practice and art institutions of Asia in questioning the very notion of (collective) identity and creating a critical space for cultural cross-pollination and encounters within the current geopolitical context.

After the symposium, the group visited the 2016 Gwangju Biennial entitled The Eighth Climate: What Does Art Do curated by Maria Lind, and then traveled to Seoul to visit the Seoul International Media Art Biennale and MMCA Seoul.

Curating the International Diaspora symposium poster, Gwangju (2016)
Curating the International Diaspora Gwangju (2016)
Curating the International Diaspora Gwangju symposium (2016)
Giuseppe Moscatello, Melanie Keen, Hoor Al Qasimi, Jessica Taylor and Mark Waugh, Curating the International Diaspora symposium, Gwangju (2016)
Curating the International Diaspora Gwangju symposium participants (2016)
Curating the International Diaspora Gwangju symposium participants (2016)

London

Participants: David A Bailey, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Jelle Bouwhuis, Elvira Dyangani Ose, Melanie Keen and Paul Goodwin

Date: June 2016
Location: Chelsea College of Art, University of the Arts London
Format: Symposium

Partners: ICF and TrAIN (Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation)

This symposium brought together leading curators to explore the ways in which contemporary art curatorship – more than any other field of enquiry – has felt the impact of diasporas. 

Participants were asked to respond to the following provocation: Since the late 1980s, contemporary curating has moved from being primarily associated with museum and exhibition display to a practice understood as the organisation, framing and circulation of ideas around global cultural production, its mediation and its dissemination. During this time, the world has experienced an increased movement of languages, cultures and identities. For intellectual and cultural diasporas from diverse origins and disciplines, a new kind of curatorial practice has attempted to represent these changes by creating what Ute Meta Bauer has called ‘a space of refuge – an in-between space of transition and of diasporic passage’ for cultural workers across the world.

During the past two decades there has not only been a proliferation of large-scale global exhibitions, but an exponential rise in trans-national curatorial projects taking diaspora as both their main focus and dominant theme. Since 1989, all large-scale global exhibitions in some way or another, from the first truly global exhibition ‘Les Magiciens de la Terre’ (1989) to Documenta 11 (2002), to the 11th International Istanbul Biennial (2009) have all engaged with and contributed to a widening of the issues as to how to present diverse cultural diasporas, and how their accompanying new networks of cultural co-operation have contributed to post-colonial models of curatorial practice that have explored beyond previously-established Western centres of artistic production.

Curating the International Diaspora, London symposium (2016)
Curating the International Diaspora, London symposium (2016)
Curating the International Diaspora, London symposium (2016)