Meet the 2020 StayHome Curatorial Online Residency grantees

Monday 16th November, Barcelona – Susanne Hætta, author, artist and photographer, Vadsø, Nicole Rafiki, artists and curator, Oslo, and Inger Emilie Solheim, artist, writer, and curator, Tromsø, are the selected candidates to take part in CIMAM’s StayHome Curatorial Online Residency generously financed by OCA – Office for Contemporary Art Norway.

The Residency

CIMAM, the International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art, and OCA – Office for Contemporary Art Norway, launched the collaborative project StayHome Online Curatorial Residency to support curatorial and research development of contemporary art professionals residing in Norway, with priority to professionals from Sámi or diaspora backgrounds. The grant aims to make successful candidates more widely networked and empowered by providing them with the opportunity to further develop their research projects or start new ones and benefit from the mentoring of a member of the CIMAM Board.

CIMAM board members Malgorzata Ludwisiak, Saskia Bos, and Agustín Pérez Rubio will be the mentors who will stimulate dialogue and reflection, introduce the candidates to other relevant contacts in their area of research, and provide guidance on their research, during the 20 consecutive days of the residency, including time for email exchange, writing, and presentation of the video and article to CIMAM.

Katya Garcia-Anton, Director and Curator of OCA – Office of Contemporary Art Norway, declared: “OCA is delighted with the diversity and quality of candidates applying. This residency was conceived in order to facilitate opportunities for art professionals who work from an Indigenous and/or diaspora perspective. As a global arts community we need to move beyond the notion that inclusion alone, of artists from previously marginalised or under-represented communities in one’s programme, is acceptable. Inclusion per se is not conducive to the long overdue transformation of our institutions. A new generation of curators needs to be fostered and centered, so facilitating that they and their artist peers set the agenda of the future themselves.”

Candidates' project proposal

Susanne Hætta: “I would like to investigate early Sámi photographers (before 1975), that pointed their lenses towards their own people and culture. This grant gives me the possibility to start researching, for the benefit of the Sámi community, both artists and others”.

Nicole Rafiki: “I am currently building Rafiki Art Initiatives (RAI) organisational structure, skills and programming. I will research how to further develop and adapt a collective art project that we initiated in the summer of 2020, following the death of George Floyd , to the 10 year memorial of the twin terror attacks in Norway on 22 July 2011.”

Inger Emilie Solheim: “I curate exhibitions in a relatively remote subarctic area of Northern Norway populated by Norwegians, Samis and Kvens, and continously exploring the northern, non-urban, mixed-origin identity”.

The Award

The three candidates will receive an honorarium of 900 € in 2020 in addition to being awarded a travel grant to attend next year’s CIMAM Annual Conference in Poland (November 5 – 7, 2021). The Annual Conference is the most important meeting point for contemporary art professionals and an essential resource for the collaboration between museums, visual art professionals, artists, and other institutions concerned with modern and contemporary art. The travel grant covers the registration fee to the conference, accommodation, and travel expenses for the selected candidates and will be paid in 2021.

In early 2021 CIMAM will make public the resulting materials from this online curatorial residency in two formats, a written essay or article, and a video recording.

About Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA)

The Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA) is a non-profit foundation created by the Norwegian Ministries of Culture and of Foreign Affairs in 2001. Its principle aim is to foster dialogue between art practitioners in Norway, including Sápmi, and the international arts scene, and support artists based in Norway in their activities around the world. As a result OCA’s discursive, exhibition, publication, residency and visitor programmes focus on bringing to Norway the plurality of practices and histories at the forefront of international artistic debates, as much as they are concerned with actively participating in such debates nationally and internationally. OCA has been responsible for Norway's contribution to the visual arts section of La Biennale di Venezia since 2001.

About CIMAM

Founded in 1962, CIMAM’s vision is a world where the contribution of museums, collections, and archives of modern and contemporary art to the cultural, social, and economic wellbeing of society is recognized and respected. Its mission is to foster a global network of museums and museum professionals to respond to the evolving needs of modern and contemporary art institutions, taking a leadership role on issues of concern by generating new and unpublished work that anticipates questions reflecting on the needs of the profession.

CIMAM Board 2020–22

Mami Kataoka, President of CIMAM and Director, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan. Suzanne Cotter, Secretary-Treasurer of CIMAM and Director, Mudam Luxembourg—Musée d'Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg. Agustín Pérez Rubio, Curator 11th Berlin Biennale. Berlin, Germany. Ann-Sofi Noring, Co-director, Moderna Museet. Stockholm, Sweden. Bart De Baere, Director, M HKA— Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen. Antwerpen, Belgium. Calin Dan, Director, MNAC Bucharest—National Museum of Contemporary Art. Bucharest, Romania. Ernestine White- Mifetu, Director, William Humphreys Art Gallery. Kimberley, South Africa. Eugene Tan, Director, National Gallery Singapore and Singapore Art Museum. Singapore. Frances Morris, Director, Tate Modern. London, United Kingdom. Malgorzata Ludwisiak, Independent Curator & Art Critic. Warsaw, Poland. Rhana Devenport, Director, Art Gallery of South Australia. Adelaide, Australia. Sarah Glennie, Director, National College of Art and Design. Dublin, Ireland. Saskia Bos, Art Historian and Curator. Amsterdam, Netherlands. Suhanya Raffel, Museum Director, M+. Hong Kong, China. Victoria Noorthoorn, Director, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires, Argentina.

CIMAM Press Release – Monday 16th November 2020

For more information contact Mireia Azuara at the CIMAM Press Office: communication@cimam.org

This residency is financed by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs