Dr Natasha Adamou is an art historian specialising in contemporary art, covering sculpture, intimacy and the public space; art and the postindustrial city; and exhibition histories. Natasha is Senior Lecturer and Stage Leader at the BA Culture, Criticism and Curation, Central Saint Martins, UAL. Prior to this post, Natasha was the Henry Moore Foundation–British School at Rome Fellow in Sculpture (2015-16) and Early Career Research Fellow at the Kingston School of Art, London (2015-18). She has published essays on the work of Gabriel Orozco in the Sculpture Journal (Liverpool University Press), and in Sabotage Art: Politics and Iconoclasm in Contemporary Latin America (I.B.Tauris). Natasha is currently working on a book on reconstructing exhibitions from the past that will result in the publication of an edited volume with Routledge (2021).
Iwona Blazwick OBE is a curator, critic, and lecturer. She was the Director of the Whitechapel Gallery, London from 2001-2022 and has recently been appointed the Chair of the Royal Commission for AlUla’s Public Art Expert Panel. Formerly at Tate Modern and London’s ICA, as well as being an independent curator in Europe and Japan; recent curatorial projects include William Kentridge: Thick Time (2016), Thomas Ruff Photographs 1979-2017 (2017), Mark Dion: Theatre of the Natural World (2018) and Michael Rakowitz (2019) at the Whitechapel Gallery, Carlos Bunga: The Architecture of Life at MAAT, Lisbon (2019), The Palace at 4am a group show at the Archaeological Museum Mykonos (2019) and Sight a solo show with Antony Gormley and the Neon Foundation on the Island of Delos (2019). Blazwick has written monographs and articles on many contemporary artists, published extensively on themes and movements in modern and contemporary art, exhibition histories and art institutions, and is series editor of Whitechapel Gallery/MIT Documents of Contemporary Art
Janine Catalano has spent fifteen years in development in the art and higher education sector, having worked at the Courtauld Institute of Art, the Royal Academy, City & Guilds of London Art School and the University of Pennsylvania. Her experience encompasses relationship management, events and fundraising, working with stakeholders including alumni and patrons, corporate supporters, trusts and foundations and statutory funders. Additionally, Janine is an art historian with a particular interest in food in modern and contemporary art, and has taught, written and lectured on the subject, as well as designing and delivering culinary cultural events.
Maria Iñigo Clavo is a researcher, curator and lecturer at the Open University of Catalonia. Her research interests are coloniality, curatorship, museology, modernity and its inventions of otherness, untranslatability and art in Latin America. Co-founder of the independent research group Peninsula in collaboration with Reina Sofía Museum. She has been a visiting fellow and Associate Lecturer at the Afterall (2015/2017), Postdoctoral Fellow for the AHRC project Meeting Margins (University of Essex), and University of São Paulo (2013-2016). She has written for publications such as e-flux, Third Text, Afterall, Stedelijk Journal, Museum of Art of São Paulo, Fran Hals Museum/De Hallen Haarlem, Valiz, L’international or Reina Sofía Museum. She has been the editor of issue # 7 (2017) of the journal Re-visiones entitled: Is it possible to decolonize? and volume 19 of journal Art in Translation, University of Edinburgh (Taylor & Francis/Routledge).
Geoff Cox, PhD, is Professor of Art and Computational Culture in the School of Arts and Creative Industries at London South Bank University, co-Director of the Centre for the Study of the Networked Image, and also Adjunct at Aarhus University in Denmark. With Jacob Lund, he is series editor for The Contemporary Condition books published by Sternberg Press and, with Joasia Krysa, series editor for DATA browser books published by Open Humanities Press. He has a research interest in software studies, network culture, contemporary aesthetics and image politics, expressed in numerous publications and collaborative projects.
Vassilios Doupas is a curator and writer. Until recently, he was Curator of Programmes at the Contemporary Art Society in London. During his tenure, he organised a series of high-profile events including the 2019 Frieze Curatorial Summit (with Frieze Art Fair), a conference on public art (with the British Art Network and Tate Modern), a series of study days on the digital (with The Serpentine Galleries). At the CAS, he was also in charge of the programme for individual patrons that support the organisation. Previously, Vassilios was Head of Fundraising at the Athens Biennial. He has held senior positions at contemporary galleries in the UK, Greece and Turkey and his writing has appeared in Art Monthly, Flash Art and The Art Newspaper (Greece). Drawing on his market and curatorial knowledge, he advises on art acquisitions and works with seasoned and young collectors to shape and refine collections.
Rachel Falconer is a curator, researcher, and educator operating at the critical intersections of contemporary art practice, feminist technoscience, emergent technologies, civic data infrastructures and networked culture. Drawing on her sustained interest in networked art practice and expanded curatorial strategies to inform her systems-based practice, Rachel has conceived multi-scale interdisciplinary public programming, alternative exhibition models and innovative public research platforms spanning a diversity of critical modes of engagement with technology. She is Head of the Digital Arts Computing Program and Lecturer in Computational Art at Goldsmiths, University London, and PhD Researcher in collaboration with CSNI/LSBU and Whitechapel Gallery.
Myvillages was founded by artists Kathrin Böhm (UK/DE), Wapke Feenstra (NL) and Antje Schiffers (DE) in 2003 to advocate for a new understanding of the rural as a place of and for cultural production. They work with formats that are close to the everyday – a communal lunch, a slide show in the village hall, a walk across the fields, a market stall. Myvillages sets up ongoing trans-local infrastructures to make connections between people and places, such as the International Village Shop and the Rural School of Economics. The session will be run by Wapke Feenstra who lives and works in Rotterdam. Her recent commissions include the Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig, Times Museum in Guangzhou, OK_Video in Jakarta, Whitechapel Gallery in London and Potato Growers at the Istanbul Biennale 2019. Together with Böhm, Feenstra has edited The Rural (2019) as part of the Documents on Contemporary Art series by Whitechapel Gallery and MIT Press. In 2021, Feenstra published the book Boerenzij/The Rural Side, a text and visual essay on rural migration and gentrification in her hometown Rotterdam.
Ann Gallagher is an independent curator and writer. From 2006-2019 she was Director of Collections, British Art at Tate, London, when she led the team of curators responsible for building and researching Tate’s collection of British art, and was closely involved in growing the collection of Latin American art. Exhibitions she has curated include Rachel Whiteread (2017) and Susan Hiller (2011) at Tate Britain, Damien Hirst (2012) and Helio Oiticica (2007) at Tate Modern, Biennale exhibitions Mark Wallinger (2001) and Rachel Whiteread (1997) at the British Pavilion, Venice, and numerous international group exhibitions, including on the genres of Landscape and Still Life. Since 2008 she has been a trustee of the Whitechapel Gallery. Recent publications include Rose Wylie, Hangaram Art Museum, Seoul, and Zarina Bhimji: Lead White, Heni Publishing. She is currently working on the catalogue raisonne of sculpture by Rachel Whiteread.
Tanya Harrod is the author of the prize-winning book The Crafts in Britain in the Twentieth Century (Yale UP, 1999). She contributes regularly to The Burlington Magazine, The Guardian, Crafts, Prospect and The Literary Review. She is on the Advisory Panel of The Burlington Magazine and was Advisor to the Craft Lives Project based at the National Sound Archive of the British Library. She is a member of the International Association of Art Critics, of the London-based Critic’s Circle and of the Art Workers Guild. In 1999, she was given a Ceramics Arts Foundation Award for distinguished service to the Ceramic Arts. With Glenn Adamson and Edward S. Cooke she is the co-founder of The Journal of Modern Craft. The Last Sane Man: Michael Cardew, modern pots, colonialism and the counterculture (Yale UP, 2012) won the 2012 James Tait Black Prize for biography. Her most recent books are The Real Thing: essays on making in the modern world (Hyphen Press, 2015), Leonard Rosoman (RA, 2016), Craft, Whitechapel Gallery 2018 (part of the series Documents of Contemporary Art).
Joseph Jones, MA RCA, is an art historian based in Sussex. His research focuses on 20th and 21st-century visual art, with a particular focus on modernism, exhibitions and cultural infrastructures. He is currently programme leader in Art and Contemporary Craft at West Dean College (- 2018), having held similar positions at the University of Brighton and the University of the Arts London. His work often involves collaboration with museums, galleries and archives, and he has contributed to lecture programmes, commissions and exhibitions at the White Cube, Stedelijk Museum, Cal Arts and the Frieze Foundation. He is the recipient of fellowships and awards from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (2018), the European Cultural Foundation (2014), Erasmus Mundus (2008) and the Fulbright Commission (2006).
Naomi Korn is one of UK’s leading experts in copyright, data protection and licensing supporting artists and cultural heritage organisations. She is the founder and Managing Director of Naomi Korn Associates and a visiting lecturer at University College London, the Kingston University Business School and City University. She is a CREATe Industry Fellow and an advisor on the National Lottery Heritage Fund Advisors Network. Together with Charles Oppenheim and Adrienne Muir, Naomi co-authored Information Law: Compliance for Librarians, Information Professionals and Knowledge Managers, published in 2020. In November 2020, Naomi was awarded the prestigious CILIP KM&I Walford Award for her outstanding contribution to Knowledge and Information Management.
Jenny Lea, Director of Audiences and Communications, joined the Whitechapel Gallery in 2015 and has worked for 20 years in arts communications in London and internationally. Her experience spans both not-for-profit and commercial sectors, including The National Gallery, Tate and Phaidon Press. At the Whitechapel Gallery she leads the organisational audience development strategy and manages the Communications team who deliver all digital activity, media relations, advertising and design.
Dr. Elena Marchevska joined LSBU in 2012, where she is an Associate Professor of Performance Studies in the School of Arts and Creative Industries, and the School’s Director of Postgraduate Research. She is predominantly interested in the relationship between performance, politics of migration and environmental humanities. Her approach to teaching, research and work prioritises an ethos that is collaborative and feminist in nature.
Dr. Richard Martin joined Whitechapel Gallery in April 2021 as The Daskalopoulos Director of Education and Public Programmes. He was previously Curator, Public Programmes at Tate, where he developed over 150 public events at Tate Modern and Tate Britain, and where he was the lead curator of the annual Tate Intensive programme for international culture professionals. His curatorial practice is supported by over 12 years’ experience teaching at King’s College London, Middlesex University and Birkbeck, University of London. Since 2016, he has been a tutor at UCL’s Bartlett School of Architecture. Richard regularly writes on art, film and architecture, and is the author of The Architecture of David Lynch (Bloomsbury, 2014). He completed his PhD in Cultural Studies at the London Consortium, a multi-disciplinary programme partnering Birkbeck with the Architectural Association, the Institute of Contemporary Arts, the Science Museum and Tate.
Renee Odjidja is a curator and an educator. Her interests are decolonized and alternative models of art education, collaboration and social practice. She was previously Curator: Youth Programmes at Whitechapel Gallery (2016-2021) where she developed a multidisciplinary programme of artist commissions and exhibitions, collaborative projects, workshops, events and professional opportunities with/for young people aged 15 to 24. Recent exhibitions and projects include A Glittering City: Ayo Akingbade with Duchamp & Sons; Virtual Studio Visits; Home: Live>In Room; Digital Curating Course (2020-21). She received an Engage Marsh Award for Excellence in Gallery Education in 2019. Renee has lectured and facilitated workshops with the University of the Arts London, Goldsmiths and London Met. She led Whitechapel Gallery’s courses on How to Curate a Youth Programme (2017 &18) and How to Curate with Communities (2019) in partnership with MIMA. She holds advisory roles focusing on diversity and new artistic production at the Freelands Foundation and Genesis Foundation. She is currently Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Camberwell College of Arts, UAL.
Dr. Nuno Faleiro Rodrigues is an art theorist based in the UK and Portugal. In 2009 he completed a PhD at the Centre for the Study of Modern European Philosophy, Middlesex University, on theories of the avant-garde in relation to concepts of time. Since then, he has been working on the relationship between art and politics through the study of contemporary art practices, from the 60s to today. He is a Research Fellow of Arnaldo Araújo Research Centre and one of the founding members of its Research Group in Art and Critical Studies. Currently, he is Deputy Director of the Art School of Porto (ESAP).
Bárbara Rodríguez Muñoz is a curator and writer. Her exhibitions at Wellcome Collection include This is a Voice (2016), Bedlam (co-curated with Mike Jay, 2016), Ayurvedic Man (2018), Jo Spence and Oreet Ashery: Misbehaving Bodies (co-curated with George Vasey, 2019 –20) and Un encuentro vegetal / Rooted Beings. From September 2021, she will take on the position of Director of Exhibitions and the Collection at Centro Botín, Santander.
Bárbara is Guest Editor of the anthology Documents of Contemporary Art: HEALTH (co-published by The MIT Press and Whitechapel Gallery, 2020). She has written for Afterall, Art Agenda, Concreta, 13th Gwangju Biennale, Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, MARG and Mousse Publishing. She holds a Master in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art, London and has lectured at Goldsmiths, Central Saint Martins and London College of Communication, amongst others.
Jane Scarth is Curator: Public Programmes at Whitechapel Gallery, responsible for public events including talks, symposiums and performance, the Writer in Residence programme and the Hear, Now podcast series. She has led on projects such as the current Ways of Knowing programme, the multi-year research strand The Rural (2017-2019) and annual Nocturnal Creatures festival (2018; 2019), as well as exhibitions with artists including Sophia Al-Maria, Rachel Pimm and Myvillages. Previously she held the role of Residency and Programmes Manager at Delfina Foundation, where she was responsible for London-based residencies and public programming with international emerging to mid-career artists.
Sunil Shah is an artist and writer. He is a PhD candidate at Central St. Martins, University of the Arts London (UAL) researching art and exhibition histories with a particular focus on Okwui Enwezor’s Documenta11 (2002). His work centres on the visual document, photography and the archives with an interest in analysing their role in relation to postcolonial theory, political science and black studies. He is Associate Lecturer at UAL on BA Photography, MA Photography and MA Photojournalism and Documentary Practice at London College of Communication and Associate Lecturer on BA Photography at University of the Creative Arts, Farnham. Since 2015, he has been Associate Editor of American Suburb X online visual culture platform and has made contributions to FOAM Magazine, Source Magazine, The Eyes Magazine and FOMU Extra.
Laura Smith is Curator at Whitechapel Gallery where she is responsible for a series of contemporary and historic exhibitions and commissions. Most recently she curated the large-scale retrospective Eileen Agar: Angel of Anarchy (2021). In the last three years Laura has also produced exhibitions with Sol Calero (2021), Helen Cammock (2019), Anna Maria Maiolino (2019) and Katja Novitskova (2018). Prior to Whitechapel Laura was Curator at Tate from 2012-18, where she curated a series of exhibitions with artists including Nashashibi/Skaer (2018), France-Lise McGurn (2017), Jessica Warboys (2017), Rebecca Warren (2017), Liliane Lijn (2015), Lucy Stein (2015), Claude Cahun (2014) and Linder (2013) as well as group exhibitions such as Virginia Woolf: an exhibition inspired by her writings (2018), Turner Prize 2016 (2016), Images Moving Out onto Space (2015) and The Modern Lens (2014). Laura writes extensively on modern and contemporary art and has contributed a chapter to Oxford University Press’ Virginia Woolf Reader, as well as publications on Pia Arke, Lisa Brice and Eileen Agar.
Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski is an archivist and mixed media artist currently pursuing a PhD at Chelsea College of Arts (UAL / Tate Britain). Her doctoral research places much needed critical attention on Jamaican born sculptor Ronald Moody. She holds an MA in Archives and Record Management, International (UCL). She is a member of the Afrofeminist Transatlantic Collaboration which maps and archives the cultural resistance of Black feminist artists in the UK and the Twins Cities and archivist for the Rita Keegan Archive Project. Her practice aims to develop collective, collaborative, archival strategies in relation to physical space, environment, the public and the personal in relation to the African Diaspora.
Sofia Victorino is a researcher and curator, and the former Daskalopoulos Director of Education and Public Programmes at the Whitechapel Gallery (2011-2021) where she lead a programme of artists’ residencies and commissions; community projects; public programmes, performance and film. Selected curatorial projects and commissions included artists Mikhail Karikis (2018), Emanuel Almborg (2017), Samson Kambalu (2016), Rivane Neuenschwander (2015), Luke Fowler and Mark Fell (2015), Peter Liversidge (2015), Bart Lodewijks (2014-15), Francis Upritchard (2014), Fraser Muggeridge (2014), Heather and Ivan Morison (2013), Theaster Gates (2013), Claire Pentecost (2013), and the collective Assemble (2017). Sofia is on the Advisory Committee for the William Townsend Memorial Lecture Series at the Slade School of Fine Art; and on the advisory board for the Documents of Contemporary Art series, co-published by Whitechapel Gallery and The MIT Press. She has lectured on the MA Curating the Contemporary (London Metropolitan University) and the MA in Contemporary Art and Education (Goldsmiths). Previously Head of Education and Public Programmes at Serralves Museum of Contemporary art, Porto (2002-2011), her research interests focus on art, social practice and decoloniality.
Jennifer Warren is a researcher and lecturer, interested in the interactions between art institutions and social movements. She is currently based at Central Saint Martins as an AHRC funded PhD candidate within Afterall Research Centre. Her PhD focuses on the case study of Museu D’Art Contemporani Barcelona, through which broader experiments in ‘radical museology’ of the 2000s are critically evaluated. The emergence of so-called ‘progressive’ institutions and their increasing identification with activism, ‘militant research’ and ‘Theory’ are of particular interest. She is a Visiting Lecturer at Central Saint Martins, and has taught on various courses including BA Fine Art and BA Culture, Curation and Criticism.
Lydia Yee has been Chief Curator at Whitechapel Gallery since 2015 where her most recent exhibitions include Radical Figures: Painting in the New Millennium (2020) and Is This Tomorrow? (2019). Her research interests include the intersection of art and social and cultural histories and cross-disciplinary practices in contemporary art. Yee has previously held curatorial positions at Barbican Art Gallery, London, and the Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York. She also co-curated British Art Show 8 (2015-16) and Frieze Talks (2018–19).
Dr. Nayia Yiakoumaki is the Director of the Hellenic Centre in London, Curatorial Studies Consultant at Whitechapel Gallery and Co-Director of the MA Curating Art and Public Programmes since its inception.
From 2005 – 2022 she was a curator and head of curatorial studies and archives at Whitechapel Gallery, where she developed an innovative programme of research exhibitions based on the use of archives as an alternative resource for curatorial practice. She devised the NEON Curatorial Exchange & Award 2011-2020, a scheme which fostered professional relationships for curators in the UK and in Greece, founded by NEON organization. From 2016-2017 she co-directed the Athens Biennale as Director of Research and International Networks and in 2017 she co-curated Waiting for the Barbarians, a statement performance and series of events by the Athens Biennale, during Documenta 14. She has curated more than forty exhibitions including John Latham: Anarchive (2010), Rothko in Britain (2012), Stephen Willats: Concerning Our Present Way of Living (2014), Guerrilla Girls: Is it even worse in Europe? (2016-2017), Killed Negatives: Unseen Images of 1930s America (2018), Andreas Lolis: Prosaic Origins (2018), Queer Spaces: London, 1980s – Today (2019) and Out of the Margins: Performance in London Institutions 1990s – 2010s (2022).
Russell Martin is a
