Each academic year, Curatorial Studies at KASK & Conservatorium School of Arts, S.M.A.K. and Ghent University co-organise the Curatorial Lectures series, inviting curators to share certain aspects of their practice. This year, Marie Hélène Pereira launches 'The Curated Institution' series on 17 November 2022.
With the series ‘The Curated Institution’ we cast a wide eye on the notion of curating as a form of institutional leadership. How can an institution be curated and what can curators do to change, tweak or reimagine institutional structures from an artistic point of view?
Building art institution as curatorial practice
Marie Helene Pereira is Director of programs at RAW Material Company, a centre for art, knowledge and society based in Dakar, Senegal. It is an initiative involved with curatorial practice, artistic education, residencies, knowledge production, and archiving of theory and criticism on art. It works to foster appreciation and growth of artistic and intellectual creativity in Africa.
The programme is trans-disciplinary and is equally informed by literature, film, architecture, politics, fashion, cuisine and diaspora.
At RAW we believe fundamentally in the possibilities that emerge when we consider institution building as a form of curatorial and social practice in and of itself. In order to expand the horizons of how we do this work, and to build strong networks, RAW has embraced institutional collaborations and residencies as an indispensable part of our programming.
This lecture will serve as a set ground for understanding the work that we have been doing since 2008 as a contribution to a better appreciation of the knowledge embedded in artistic practices in the context of Senegal, on the African continent and beyond.
Marie Hélène Pereira is a Curator and cultural practitioner from Dakar, Senegal. She is Director of Programs at RAW Material Company where she has organized exhibitions and related discursive programs including the participation of RAW 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 at the 13th edition of Dakar Biennale of Contemporary African art (2018), as well as Still Present! - the 12th edition of Berlin Biennale (2022). In 2021 she was selected as one of the recipients of the ICI Curatorial Research Fellowship – a Marian Goodman Gallery initiative conceived by artist Steve McQueen - in honor of the late Okwui Enwezor.
Pereira has a strong interest in politics of identity and histories of migration.
