Curating with Care: From Theory to Practice
The online course “Curating with Care: From Theory to Practice” offers a comprehensive exploration of curatorial theories and practices with an emphasis on activist, feminist, relational, and socially engaged approaches. In two interactive sessions, participants will receive a deeper understanding of the tensions, contradictions, and potentials of the interplay between curating, care, gender, and the capitalist system. The central idea is to become aware of the histories and tensions around curating and care, and to consciously re-frame this field of practice through the lens of feminist care ethics, as a framework for social justice within the arts.
Beyond theoretical exploration, the course equips participants with curatorial strategies to embody care as a lived practice within the curatorial realm: Through engaged discussions and interactive group work, the participants collectively craft a “Manifesto of Curating with Care,” transferring abstract concepts of feminist care ethics into tangible propositions for transformation within the arts.
The course provides an engaged learning journey, enabling participants to navigate the complexities of the contemporary curatorial landscape through a lens of care. Participants will emerge equipped with a hands-on strategies to curate exhibitions, public programming, and situated experiences with care.
Sascia Bailer is a feminist researcher, writer and curator working at the intersection of care, gender, and socially engaged art. As a PhD candidate at the Zurich University of the Arts & University of Reading, she researches the ambivalent relationship between curating and care. In 2019/2020 she initiated a participatory curatorial programming on care as the Artistic Director of M.1 Arthur Boskamp-Stiftung in rural Northern Germany. She is author of “Curating, Care, and Corona” (Verlag der Arthur Boskamp Stiftung, 2020), and is the co-editor of the anthology „Letters to Joan“ (2020, HKW) and of the artist monographies „Re-Assembling Motherhood(s): On Radical Care and Collective Art as Feminist Practices“ by Maternal Fantasies (Onomatopee, 2021), and „What We Could Have Become: On Queer Feminist Filmmaking“ by Malu Blume (Onomatopee, 2021). She has worked internationally within the arts, including MoMA PS1, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, and Vera List Center for Art and Politics.