Shayari De Silva

In 2022, 41 contemporary art curators, researchers, and museum directors from 24 different countries were awarded to attend the CIMAM 2022 Annual Conference. The CIMAM 2022 Annual Conference, titled "The Attentive Museum. Permeable Practices for a Common Ground", was held in Mallorca (Balearic Islands), Spain on 11–13 November, hosted by Es Baluard Museu d'Art Contemporani de Palma.

Shayari De Silva's Conference Report

I was looking forward to the opportunity to reflect upon the theme of The Attentive Museum at this year’s CIMAM conference, especially in the company of other curators. My practice is based in Sri Lanka, where there are very few curators, and the sense of solidarity and collective enterprise that the conference revealed was deeply encouraging. I appreciated immensely the opportunities for listening and discussing the shared challenges, themes, and questions that engage us across our varied practices and locations. I was glad to hear conversations and sessions on issues of governance and the navigation of the systems in which our curatorial practices are embedded. Wherever specific mechanisms of governance and practice were mentioned in the sessions, I found these to be incredibly valuable though often this happened more in the informal conversations following the sessions.

The presentation by Sethembile Msezane on considering the living histories of our collections resonated with me particularly, as part of the collection of the Geoffrey Bawa Trust in Sri Lanka, where I am based, is held in a garden. In a place like Sri Lanka, with its warm, humid climate, and spaces where inside and outside are not always defined, the relationship between the animate and inanimate are necessarily clear. I really appreciated the opportunity to discuss this further with colleagues at the workshop afterward and the opportunity to think about different cultural contexts with a degree of specificity brought by the experiences of those engaged in the workshop. I feel these conversations are an important step towards reframing these approaches as being contextual rather than the alternative.

I also really appreciated the artists’ presentations from Day 3 of the conference, and the experiences of Philip Rizk and Emily Jacir particularly. Reflecting on my own recent and previous experiences of the protests in Sri Lanka, the conference left me with much to consider on the theme of the museum’s relationship to its community, and how as museum professionals we work towards ensuring these institutions uphold core values without being instrumentalized. I feel this is at the heart of the Attentive Museum, and the more we are able to share, discuss and analyze collectively the ways in which we seek to do this as individuals and institutions, the more we will be able to succeed in attentive practice.

I am immensely grateful to CIMAM and the Getty Foundation for this uniquely nourishing experience, which has given me much to consider and develop in my work.