Curators' Hub 2023

Experimenter Curators’ Hub

13th Edition | Experimenter - Hindustan Road, Kolkata, India

November 24 & 25, 2023

The 13th edition of the Experimenter Curators’ Hub in Kolkata, India, marks the convergence of curators from across the globe who, through their distinctive curatorial practices, are committed to making a profound difference by responding to momentous shifts in contemporary practice. Over the last 13 years since its inception, the Curators' Hub has pioneered the exchange of ideas between the foremost thinkers and curators in the field of exhibition-making.

"The participating curators are known to have questioned systemic hierarchies dominating our world, through their work. They have underscored the importance of collaboration, community building and dissemination of knowledge. Their unbound discussions at the hub will provide a space to resist divisiveness and in turn embrace pluralities, nurture multiplicity and foster collective thinking and dialogue on social justice." - Prateek & Priyanka Raja, Directors of Experimenter.

Moderated by curator and writer Natasha Ginwala, the hub attempts to provide a platform for expansion on and reinvigoration of curatorial thinking. Each year, the hub invites a guest speaker who has challenged boundaries and has stirred others to listen to and recognise crucial alternative narratives. The guest speaker for 2023 is journalist, poet-writer and Adivasi activist, Jacinta Kerketta who through her work, has documented and brought visibility to the struggles of the Adivasi community, inspiring a wide range of practitioners.

Experimenter Curators’ Hub is a platform for developing and sustaining discourse on curatorial practice and exhibition-making through critical discussion and debate. Structured as a deeply intensive program, every year the hub invites some of the foremost curators of the world to present their practice with reference to recent exhibitions curated by them. Over the past few years, the hub has also been instrumental in facilitating conversations surrounding resistance and activism beyond the domain of contemporary art and exhibition-making by inviting guest speakers with background in law, journalism, literature and poetry to engage in dialogic exchanges drawing upon their work and lived experiences.

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The participating curators at ECH 2023 are:

Inti Guerrero, Curator, writer, Co-Artistic Director of the 24th Biennale of Sydney

Mayank Mansingh Kaul, Researcher, writer and curator with a focus on post-colonial histories of Indian textiles

Natalie King, Professor of Visual Arts, VCA, University of Melbourne, curator of New Zealand Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2022

Renan Laru-an, Researcher, curator and the Artistic Director of SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin

Shubigi Rao, Artist, writer and curator, Artistic Director for the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2022-23

Sohrab Hura, Artist, lives and works in New Delhi

Guest speaker: Jacinta Kerketta, Journalist, poet, writer and activist

The Hub will be moderated by Natasha Ginwala, curator, researcher and writer, co-curator, Sharjah Biennial 16 (2023-25), artistic director of Colomboscope, Sri Lanka since 2019 and associate Curator at Large at Gropius Bau, Berlin (2018 – 2024).

Experimenter Curators' Hub 2023 is organised by Experimenter Learning Program Foundation and is supported by Australian Consulate-General, Kolkata, Goethe- Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Kolkata, ArtReview (Strategic Partner) and TAKE Magazine (Media Partner).

The Hub will be held at Experimenter – Hindustan Road, Kolkata and live streamed on Experimenter and ArtReview’s websites, breaking down traditional constraints of location and opening up the debate to people around the world. The online audience has the opportunity to question and interact with the curators in real time. Since 2011, the Hub has hosted over 100 leading curators.

All presentations are archived online and are offered as a free resource to enable audiences to use as part of research and also experience the event. Presentations from the previous editions may be viewed here: https://experimenter.in/curators-hub/video-archive/
Inti Guerrero is the co-Artistic Director of the 24th Biennale of Sydney. He was tutor of the Curatorial Studies postgraduate programme at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts- KASK, Ghent (2021-2023). He was the Artistic Director of bap - bellas artes projects in the Philippines (2018-2022). He was the Estrellita B. Brodsky Adjunct Curator at Tate, London (2016-2020), curator of the 38th EVA International, Limerick (2018), co-curator of Dakar Biennale, La Biennale de l’Art africain contemporain (2018); and Artistic Director of TEOR/éTica, San Jose (2011-2014).

Guerrero has been a tutor, guest professor and lecturer at universities and art schools in Europe, the United States, Asia and Latin America, including: Chelsea College for the Arts-University of London; CCA-California College for the Arts, San Francisco; Bard College, New York; Hong Kong University; and Studium Generale Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, where he co-curated the academic and public programme in 2011. He has also written for exhibition catalogs and journals including Afterall, Metropolis M, Manifesta, Art Asia Pacific and ArtNexus.

As an independent curator he curated or co-curated the exhibitions: ‘Myth Makers’, Sunpride Foundation - Tai Kwun, Hong Kong (2022); ‘Institute for Tropical and Galactical Studies’ in Yokohama Triennale 2020, Yokohama Museum of Art; ‘Ming Wong. Your Special Island’ at CCP Cultural Center of the Philippines, Manila (2019); ‘Long Green Lizards’ at Dakar Biennale, La Biennale de l’Art africain contemporain, Dakar’ (2018); ‘Fraccionar’ at Casa Luis Barragán, Mexico City (2018); ‘Soil and Stones, Souls and Songs’ (touring at MCAD, Manila, Para Site, Hong Kong, and Jim Thompson Art Center, Bangkok, 2016-2017); ‘Afterwork’ (touring at Para Site, Hong Kong; and ILHAM, Kuala Lumpur, 2016-2017); ‘The World is Our Home. A Poem on Abstraction,’ Para Site, Hong Kong (2015); ‘A Chronicle of Interventions,’ Tate Modern, London (2014); ‘A Transatlantic Affair. Josephine Baker and Le Corbusier,’ Museum of Art of Rio-MAR in Rio de Janeiro (2014); ‘A Journal of the Plague Year’ (touring at Para Site, Hong Kong; The Cube, Taipei; Arko Art Center, Seoul; and Kadist Art Foundation and The Lab, San Francisco; 2013-2015); ‘The City of the Naked Man,’ Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo (2011); ‘Light Years. Cristina Lucas’ (touring at Centro de Arte 2 de Mayo, Madrid; Carrillo Gil Museum, Mexico City; and Museo Amparo, Puebla 2010-2011); ‘Flying Down to Earth’ (touring at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Vigo; and FRAC Lorraine, 2009-2010); ‘Duet for Cannibals’ at Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam; ‘Eppur si Muove,’ Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino (2009). a.o.

Photo credit: Joshua Morris
Mayank Mansingh Kaul (He/Him) is a New Delhi-based independent researcher, writer and curator with a focus on post colonial histories of Indian textiles. He is a graduate in textile design from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad.

Exhibitions that he has curated include Fracture — Indian Textiles, New Conversations (Devi Art Foundation, Gurugram, 2015); The Art of Gold (Bikaner House, 2017); Abraham & Thakore — A Retrospective, 25 Years (New Delhi, 2017); Crossroads — Textile Journeys with Ritu Kumar (India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, 2018); New Traditions — Influences & Inspirations in Indian Textiles, 1947 to 2017 (Jawahar Kala Kendra, Jaipur, 2018); Meanings, Metaphors — Handspun & Handwoven in the 21st Century (The Registry of Sarees, Chirala-Coimbatore-Bengaluru, 2018-19); Red Lilies, Water Birds — The Saree in Nine Stories (The Registry of Sarees, Hampi, 2022); Fine Counts — Indian Cotton Textiles and Vayan — The Art of Indian Brocades(National Crafts Museum & Hastkala Academy and Devi Art Foundation, New Delhi, 2022-2023) as well as Woven Narratives (Hampi Art Labs, JSW Foundation and Devi Art Foundation, Hampi, 2023). Upcoming exhibitions that he is curating include Kāth Padar — Paithani & Beyond (TVAM Foundation, Paithan), Pat-Bandha — The Art of Indian Ikat (National Crafts Museum & Hastkala Academy and Devi Art Foundation, New Delhi) and a Survey of Indian contemporary embroideries (Sutrakala Foundation in association with JDH, Jodhpur). He is the editor of Baluchari — Tradition & Beyond (Weavers Studio Resource Centre, 2016), Cloth and India — Towards Recent Histories, 1947 to 2015 (Marg, 2016), Take on Art Design (2012), Take on Art Fashion (2019) and Sutr Santati — Then, Now, Next (Baldota Foundation, 2023). His writings on Indian textiles, design and fashion have, further, been published in India and abroad and he has lectured widely on the subjects. He is Contributing Editor for Architectural Digest India, Member of the Academic Council at Museum of Art & Photography (MAP), Bengaluru, Member of the Arts Advisory Council (South Asia) at The Asia Society and was Advisor to the Dr Bhaudaji Lad Museum, Mumbai on its We Wear Culture initiate — a collaboration with the Google Arts & Culture.

Photo credit: Jasmeet Arora
Natalie King is an Australian curator, writer and Professor of Visual Arts, Victorian College of the Arts at the University of Melbourne. Recent projects include Curator of Yuki Kihara: Paradise Camp, Aotearoa New Zealand at the 59th Venice Biennale 2022 and Powerhouse Museum, Sydney 2023; Reversible Destiny: Australian and Japanese Contemporary Photography at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum as part of the 2022 Olympics Cultural Programme; and Series Editor of Mini Monographs with Thames & Hudson.

In 2017, King was Curator of Tracey Moffatt: My Horizon, Australian Pavilion, the 57th Venice Art Biennale. She has curated exhibitions for the Singapore Art Museum; the National Museum of Art, Osaka; National Gallery of Indonesia, Jakarta; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan, amongst others where she has explored Indigeneity, intersectionality, feminism and new media. She has contributed to numerous publications including Phaidon books, Flash Art International, LEAP, Ocula and Art and Australia. She is President of AICA-Australia (International Association of Art Critics, Paris).

In 2020, King was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for "service to the contemporary visual arts". In 2021, she was awarded a University of Melbourne Excellence Award: The Patricia Grimshaw Award for Mentor Excellence.

Photo credit: Luke Walker
Renan Laru-an is a researcher, curator, and the artistic director of SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin. He creates exhibitionary, public, and research programs that study ‘insufficient’ and ‘subtracted’ images or subjects at the juncture of development and integration projects.

A founding member of the Philippine Contemporary Art Network (PCAN), a recently initiated public institution for contemporary art housed at the University of the Philippines Vargas Museum, he serves as the Public Engagement and Artistic Formation Coordinator since 2017. Laru-an has (co-)curated festivals and biennials including the 2nd Biennale Matter of Art, Prague (2022); the 6th Singapore Biennale, Singapore (2019); the 8th OK.Video—Indonesia Media Arts Festival, Jakarta (2017); and the 1st Lucban Assembly, Quezon (2015). Other exhibitions are Sourcebook: Mandy El-Sayegh and Helena Hunter, LUX, London (2022); But Ears Have No Lids: Maayan Amir and Ruti Sela, PCAN, Manila (2021); Motions of this Kind, SOAS, London (2019); A Tripoli Agreement, Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah (2018); The Artist and the Social Dreamer, Forecast Festival, Haus Der Kulturen Der Welt, Berlin (2017); From Bandung to Berlin: If all of the moons aligned, SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin (2016); among others.

Renan is editor of the anthology Writing Presently (PCAN, 2019), and with titre provisoire, he co-edited Turning Points: Coincidences in Prepositions (2022) for the Harun Farocki Institut’s Rosa Mercedes Journal. Ongoing project is Promising Arrivals, Violent Departures, a theoretical study on the formation of the artistic, the curatorial, and visual cultures in the exhibitionary heritage and practices of non-metropolitan Mindanao, the southernmost region of the Philippines.

Laru-an’s scholarship has been supported by the Foundation for Arts Initiatives, the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, and other fellowships. He was Curatorial Advisor to the 58th Carnegie International.

Between 2012 and 2015, Renan directed the now-offline, multidisciplinary and virtual organization DiscLab | Research and Criticism.

Laru-an was born and grew up in Sultan Kudarat, he now lives in Berlin.

Photo courtesy: Singapore Art Museum
Artist and writer Shubigi Rao’s fields of study include histories and lies, literature and violence, libraries and archival systems, ecologies and natural history. Her films, art, books, and photographs look at current and historical flashpoints as perspectival shifts, and examine contemporary crises of displacement, whether of people, languages, cultures, or knowledge bodies. Since 2014, she has been working on Pulp: A Short Biography of the Banished Book, her decade-long film, book and visual art project about the ideologies behind censorship and book destruction. Rao's works have been exhibited in international biennales and institutions, including the 10th Asia-Pacific Triennial, Brisbane, Australia (2021-22), a solo show in 2023 at Rossi and Rossi Gallery, Hong Kong, and another upcoming solo at Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, China.

In 2022 she represented Singapore at the 59th Venice Biennale (Arte), Italy. She has won numerous accolades for her visual art practice and literary works, including the Singapore Literature Prize, and the APB Signature Art Prize – Juror’s Choice Award. Rao was the Artistic Director for the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2022-23.

Photo credit: Alfonse Chiu
Sharareh Bajracharya is an art educator and one of the founding members of the non-profit Srijanalaya. Her life has become about bringing together artists and educators to foster the curiosities and joy of young children, young adults, and communities around them. She also teaches as a Visiting Faculty at Kathmandu University Department of Art and Design and the School of Education and has edited/produced children’s books. An equal fascination with art management led her to be the Director of the non-profit art exhibition Kathmandu Triennale 2077.
Sohrab Hura (b.1981) lives and works in New Delhi, India. His work with drawings, film, photographs, sound and text are part of fluid relationship with the ‘Image.’ Many of his works attempt to question a constantly shifting world and his own place within it. Family and Illness reside at the heart of the photobooks Life Is Elsewhere and Look It’s Getting Sunny Outside!!! Similar reflections on the everyday ordinariness are also explored with pastel drawings in Things Felt But Not Quite Expressed. On the other hand the experimental film The Lost Head & The Bird looks directly at the infrastructure of power and systems and the role of story-telling within it. Sohrab has expressed the hope that his work can be “experienced like a tree” with deep roots: each work is a separate branch, and “no matter how different from the neighbouring ones,” each is “connected to the other branches by a single trunk.”

He has self-published five books under the imprint UGLY DOG out of which the book The Coast won The Aperture - Paris Photo PhotoBook of the Year Award 2019 and the book Look It’s Getting Sunny Outside!!! was shortlisted for the same award in 2018. The film Bittersweet (2019) was awarded the Principal Prize of the International Jury at the 66^th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen 2020. The Lost Head & The Bird (2017) had previously won the NRW Award at the 64^th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen 2018.

Photo credit: Sheila Zhao
GUEST SPEAKER

Jacinta Kerketta is a journalist, well known poet, writer and activist. She belongs to Oraon Adivasi of Jharkhand. Three of his poetry collections have been published. And it is translated into many Indian and foreign languages. She has not only documented the struggle of Adivasi society, their perspective in his creative writings but also shared this aspect among people in many countries including India. In 2022, Forbes India included her in the list of 22 self-made women of the country. In 2014, she was awarded the Voice of Asia Recognition Award by Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact, Thailand. She is currently working for the education of Adivasi youth in the villages of Jharkhand. She is also doing creative writing work for children with association of cycle magazine, Ektara trust, Bhopal.
MODERATOR

Natasha Ginwala is a curator, researcher and writer, co-curator, Sharjah Biennial 16 (2023-25), artistic director of Colomboscope, Sri Lanka since 2019 and associate Curator at Large at Gropius Bau, Berlin (2018 – 2024). She was also artistic director of the 13th Gwangju Biennale with Defne Ayas (2021). Ginwala has been part of curatorial teams of 8th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (2014), Contour Biennale 8, documenta 14 (2017), Taipei Biennale 2012 and co-curated several international exhibitions including at e-flux, Sharjah Art Foundation, Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum für Gegenwart, ifa Gallery, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, L’ appartement 22, Muzeum Sztuki w Łodzi, MCA Chicago, 56th Venice Biennale, SAVVY Contemporary and Zeitz MOCAA. Ginwala is a widely published author with a focus on contemporary art, visual culture, and social justice.

Photo credit: Victoria Tomaschko