Material Voices

                                                                                                    Vinita Gatne: offerings (gargalo) (2021)

Material Voices: Feminist genealogies of the work of making exhibitions aims to investigate curatorial practices and women’s labour from the sixties until today. In this programme, we will be inviting curators, artists and writers from different generations and contexts to converse and share their reflections on particular work experiences.

The first part of Material Voices will take place in 2021-2022 and will consist in a series of encounters at Bulegoa z/b. In each encounter, two speakers will be invited to talk together about a particular exhibition, with a third guest presenting a work from a different context.

Material Voices uses dialogue as a tool for research. It explores the materiality of voices, exhibitions and artworks, and the intersections between them.

Material Voices asks the following questions among others: What does it mean to make exhibitions from a feminist perspective? What kinds of genealogies will emerge from studying these ways of working? Will these genealogies be able to unravel other established genealogies? What are the limits encountered by curatorial practice as an independent practice in its relation to institutional frameworks? And what is it in an exhibition that turns it into an exceptional testing ground for the putting into practice of situated ways of doing things?

Material Voices came into being through something we realised after hearing the stories of a number of female curators, whom we invited to talk as part of The Papers of the Exhibition (1977-2017) and Course on Curating. Their personal archives are generally sparse, scattered and fragmented. These reflect the ephemeral nature of the exhibition format; and also the fragility and precariousness of practices that tend to be carried out in independent conditions.

Course on Curating and The Papers of the Exhibition (1977-2017) included the participation of: BNV Producciones, Catherine David, Ana Dević (WHW), Tamara Díaz Bringas, Corinne Diserens, Keyna Eleison, Aurora Fernández Polanco, Dora García, Yaiza Hernández, Bojana Kunst, Lisette Lagnado, Maria Lind, Isabella Maidment, Ruth Noack, Ines Schaber, Azucena Vieites, Rachel Weiss and Carla Zaccagnini.

Material Voices: Feminist Genealogies of the Work of Making Exhibitions is supported by the Foundation for Arts Initiatives (FFAI), New York.