Walking & Talking with Katerina Gregos

Bige Örer, Katerina Gregos • 3/11/26

• Video Summary

  Walking & Talking, hosted by Istanbul- and London-based curator and researcher Bige Örer, is a series of video-recorded conversational experiences based on walking with each guest curator in the same location or in two different places in the world. Some of these conversations address broad societal, cultural, or philosophical questions, while others may unfold more intimate concerns and flow with inner journeys. The walks are imagined as poems- collaborative verses composed along a shared path.

  In this episode, Örer takes a long walk with Katerina Gregos, the artistic director of the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST) in Athens, Greece. They walk through the city with Eclair, Gregos’s canine companion, and their conversation traverses the Greek capital’s architectural history, public space, cultural life, and recent urban transformations, which have all been shaped by crisis, development, and gentrification. Along the way, Gregos also discusses her curatorial work at EMST, describing the museum as a public platform for addressing questions of democracy, social life, and ecology through contemporary culture in Greece and the Mediterranean region.

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• About Katerina Gregos

  Katerina Gregos is a curator, lecturer, and writer originally from Athens, based in Brussels since 2006. Since the summer of 2021, she has served as the artistic director of the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST), Athens. 

  From the beginning of her professional career, her curatorial practice has consistently explored the relationship between art, society, and politics with a particular view on questions of democracy, human rights, economy, ecology, crisis, and changing global production circuits.

  Gregos has held directorial positions for both private and public institutions, and has curated numerous large-scale international exhibitions and nine international biennials. Most recently, she was chief curator of the 1st Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art (RIBOCA1): Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More, which she was also instrumental in setting up as an institution (the exhibition was selected by both ArtNet and Hyperallergic as one of the top 20 international exhibitions of 2018).

• About Bige Örer

  Bige Örer is an Istanbul- and London-based independent curator and writer dedicated to amplifying the voices and visions of artists. Her curatorial practice is rooted in centering creativity and artistic perspectives, ensuring that artists remain at the heart of every exhibition and project she oversees. From 2008 to 2024, Örer served as the director of the Istanbul Biennial, where she transformed the biennial into a dynamic platform for artistic collaboration and intellectual exchange. She was instrumental in developing programs that broadened the biennial’s reach, particularly focusing on children and youth, while fostering artistic engagement throughout Turkey and internationally. In 2022, Örer curated Once upon a time…, the Füsun Onur exhibition at the Pavilion of Turkey for the 59th Venice Biennale. Her curatorial projects also include Flâneuses (Institut français Istanbul, 2017), an ongoing series involving walks with artists. Örer played a key role in establishing the Istanbul Biennial Production and Research Program, the SaDe Artist Support Fund, and coordinated initiatives such as the Cité des Arts Turkey Workshop Artist Residency Program and the Turkish Pavilion at the International Art and Architecture Exhibitions of the Venice Biennale. Örer has contributed articles to numerous publications and taught at Istanbul Bilgi University. She has also served as a consultant and jury member for various international art institutions, and from 2013 to 2024, she was the vice president of the International Biennial Association. During this time, she also contributed to the editorial and programming board of the association’s journal, PASS. She is a member of the Curatorial Studies Workshop, part of the Expanded Artistic Research Network (EARN).

Walking & Talking with Tīna Pētersone

Bige Örer, Tīna Pētersone • 11/17/25

• Video Summary

  Walking & Talking, hosted by Istanbul- and London-based curator and researcher Bige Örer, is a series of video-recorded conversational experiences based on walking with each guest curator in the same location or in two different places in the world. Some of these conversations address broad societal, cultural, or philosophical questions, while others may unfold more intimate concerns and flow with inner journeys. The walks are imagined as poems- collaborative verses composed along a shared path.

  In this episode, Örer walks and talks with Latvian curator Tīna Pētersone through the streets of Riga, Latvia. Their focus: the challenges of curatorial practice amid the political and social dynamics in the Baltic countries today, especially in Latvia, emphasizing the need to internationalize curatorial collaborations with other art ecosystems.

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• About Tīna Pētersone

  Tīna Pētersone is a Latvian independent curator with an MFA in Curating from Goldsmiths, University of London.
  
  In 2025, she co-founded the inaugural Riga Art Week and she serves as Creative Producer for Liepāja 2027, European Capital of Culture, where she is developing international contemporary art commissions.
  
  Her practice is shaped by residencies and fellowships across Europe, Africa, and the US: at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris; Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago (CEC ArtsLink, 2022); the Baltic Fellowship at Performa Biennial in New York (2023); the Who Is Being Heard? curatorial program for research across the Nordic region; and the Sisters Hope residency in Copenhagen (2024). She is currently in an academic program, Reframing Colonial Legacies, at Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen, Germany, and the University of Cape Coast in Cape Coast, Ghana.
  
  Her current work focuses on developing art infrastructures and creating opportunities for artists and art professionals, with particular emphasis on cultural exchanges that connect the Baltics with global artistic communities.

• About Bige Örer

  Bige Örer is an Istanbul- and London-based independent curator and writer dedicated to amplifying the voices and visions of artists. Her curatorial practice is rooted in centering creativity and artistic perspectives, ensuring that artists remain at the heart of every exhibition and project she oversees. From 2008 to 2024, Örer served as the director of the Istanbul Biennial, where she transformed the biennial into a dynamic platform for artistic collaboration and intellectual exchange. She was instrumental in developing programs that broadened the biennial’s reach, particularly focusing on children and youth, while fostering artistic engagement throughout Turkey and internationally. In 2022, Örer curated Once upon a time…, the Füsun Onur exhibition at the Pavilion of Turkey for the 59th Venice Biennale. Her curatorial projects also include Flâneuses (Institut français Istanbul, 2017), an ongoing series involving walks with artists. Örer played a key role in establishing the Istanbul Biennial Production and Research Program, the SaDe Artist Support Fund, and coordinated initiatives such as the Cité des Arts Turkey Workshop Artist Residency Program and the Turkish Pavilion at the International Art and Architecture Exhibitions of the Venice Biennale. Örer has contributed articles to numerous publications and taught at Istanbul Bilgi University. She has also served as a consultant and jury member for various international art institutions, and from 2013 to 2024, she was the vice president of the International Biennial Association. During this time, she also contributed to the editorial and programming board of the association’s journal, PASS. She is a member of the Curatorial Studies Workshop, part of the Expanded Artistic Research Network (EARN).

Walking & Talking with Lawrence Rinder

Bige Örer, Lawrence Rinder • 9/15/25

• Video Summary

  Walking & Talking, hosted by Istanbul- and London-based curator and researcher Bige Örer, is a series of video-recorded conversational experiences based on walking with each guest curator in the same location or in two different places in the world. Some of these conversations address broad societal, cultural, or philosophical questions, while others may unfold more intimate concerns and flow with inner journeys. The walks are imagined as poems- collaborative verses composed along a shared path.

  In this episode, recorded on February 27, 2025, Örer speaks with curator Lawrence Rinder. Their exchange weaves through reflections on working across different geographies and institutional contexts, the complexities and freedoms of curating independently versus within institutions, and their shared passions for art, poetry, walking, and animals.

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• About Lawrence Rinder

  Lawrence Rinder is Director Emeritus of the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. He has organized exhibitions at the  Walker Art Center, the Drawing Center, the Fabric Workshop, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Berkeley Art Museum and Film Archive, among many other venues. He is currently on the boards of Kadist and the Wangduechhoeling Palace and Museum in Bumthang, Bhutan. He lives in Eymoutiers, France. 

• About Bige Örer

  Bige Örer is an Istanbul- and London-based independent curator and writer dedicated to amplifying the voices and visions of artists. Her curatorial practice is rooted in centering creativity and artistic perspectives, ensuring that artists remain at the heart of every exhibition and project she oversees. From 2008 to 2024, Örer served as the director of the Istanbul Biennial, where she transformed the biennial into a dynamic platform for artistic collaboration and intellectual exchange. She was instrumental in developing programs that broadened the biennial’s reach, particularly focusing on children and youth, while fostering artistic engagement throughout Turkey and internationally. In 2022, Örer curated Once upon a time…, the Füsun Onur exhibition at the Pavilion of Turkey for the 59th Venice Biennale. Her curatorial projects also include Flâneuses (Institut français Istanbul, 2017), an ongoing series involving walks with artists. Örer played a key role in establishing the Istanbul Biennial Production and Research Program, the SaDe Artist Support Fund, and coordinated initiatives such as the Cité des Arts Turkey Workshop Artist Residency Program and the Turkish Pavilion at the International Art and Architecture Exhibitions of the Venice Biennale. Örer has contributed articles to numerous publications and taught at Istanbul Bilgi University. She has also served as a consultant and jury member for various international art institutions, and from 2013 to 2024, she was the vice president of the International Biennial Association. During this time, she also contributed to the editorial and programming board of the association’s journal, PASS. She is a member of the Curatorial Studies Workshop, part of the Expanded Artistic Research Network (EARN).

Walking & Talking with Anne Barlow

Bige Örer, Anne Barlow • 8/1/25

• Video Summary

  Walking & Talking, hosted by Istanbul- and London-based curator and organizer Bige Örer, is a series of video-recorded conversational experiences based on walking with each guest curator in the same location or in two different places in the world. Some of these conversations address broad societal, cultural, or philosophical questions, while others may unfold more intimate concerns and flow with inner journeys. The walks are imagined as poems shared between the participants on their shared paths.

  
  In this episode, recorded on October 19, 2024, Örer speaks with curator Anne Barlow. In this thoughtful interview, Barlow, Director of Tate St Ives, reflects on her curatorial journey from Glasgow to New York and now to rural Cornwall, highlighting her long-standing commitment to artist-centered, internationally attuned, and socially responsive curating. She contrasts the demands of working in major urban institutions with the deeply local and community-focused context of St Ives, where global issues like ecology, extraction, and identity intersect with local concerns.

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• About Anne Barlow

  Anne Barlow is Director of Tate St Ives, Art Fund Museum of the Year 2018. Previously, she was Artistic Director at Tate St Ives (2017–2018), Director of Art in General, New York (2007–2016), Curator of Education and Media Programs at the New Museum, New York (1999–2006), and Curator of Contemporary Art and Design at Glasgow Museums, Scotland (1994–1999). Across these roles, she has been instrumental for programmatic and institutional vision and strategies, overseen museum collections, new commissions, artist residencies, public programs, and managed numerous international collaborations.

• About Bige Örer

  Bige Örer is an Istanbul- and London-based independent curator and writer dedicated to amplifying the voices and visions of artists. Her curatorial practice is rooted in centering creativity and artistic perspectives, ensuring that artists remain at the heart of every exhibition and project she oversees. From 2008 to 2024, Örer served as the director of the Istanbul Biennial, where she transformed the biennial into a dynamic platform for artistic collaboration and intellectual exchange. She was instrumental in developing programs that broadened the biennial’s reach, particularly focusing on children and youth, while fostering artistic engagement throughout Turkey and internationally. In 2022, Örer curated Once upon a time…, the Füsun Onur exhibition at the Pavilion of Turkey for the 59th Venice Biennale. Her curatorial projects also include Flâneuses (Institut français Istanbul, 2017), an ongoing series involving walks with artists. Örer played a key role in establishing the Istanbul Biennial Production and Research Program, the SaDe Artist Support Fund, and coordinated initiatives such as the Cité des Arts Turkey Workshop Artist Residency Program and the Turkish Pavilion at the International Art and Architecture Exhibitions of the Venice Biennale. Örer has contributed articles to numerous publications and taught at Istanbul Bilgi University. She has also served as a consultant and jury member for various international art institutions, and from 2013 to 2024, she was the vice president of the International Biennial Association. During this time, she also contributed to the editorial and programming board of the association’s journal, PASS. She is a member of the Curatorial Studies Workshop, part of the Expanded Artistic Research Network (EARN).

Exhibition / Exhibitionary

Multiple authors • 7/1/25

• Introduction

  The Lexicon is an ongoing project begun by the international Curatorial Studies Workshop, which is part of the Expanded Artistic Research Network (EARN). The initial idea was to locate each member’s take on key terms often taken for granted in the curatorial field—such as curating, curatorial, exhibition, exhibitionary, representation, and so forth. We quickly discovered that as fundamental as these terms are, they didn’t carry the same meaning for each of us. The Lexicon stimulated a process of mutual understanding while forming a common ground for a cumulative, multi-perspective dialogue. It was an exercise focused not on finding the “most valid” argument, but on the cumulative—and, in a lot of ways, curatorial—juxtaposition built on the collective reflection and dialogue. For The Curatorial, we will continue to build on what we started, adding new definitions/propositions for terms over time to continue a dialogue that we hope will be beneficial and provocative for all those interested in the field and who appreciate the plasticity of meaning and experience so essential to the work we do. The Lexicon is, therefore, not intended to suggest or offer a clear and single definition for the terms proposed. Instead, it aims to generate a productive dialogue between definitions that can help map the variety of curatorial approaches, aesthetic imaginaries, and forms of practice. The Lexicon will stage this dialogue with monthly contributions from curators, artists, organizers, activists, academics, and critical thinkers.—Carolina Rito, Lexicon section editor

• Exhibition

  Nina Liebenberg

  We can define “exhibition” as an event varying in duration that is curated for an audience and includes the display of objects, text, audio-visual elements, and performances. As a format, it can function as a tool to facilitate inter/trans/cross-disciplinary engagements that promote multiple interpretations of single objects (loosening the taxonomic framework to which disciplinary objects and images are usually subjected).

  In his catalogue essay for the exhibition Away from Home, held at the Wexner Center for the Arts (2003), the curator Jeffrey Kipnis calls an exhibition a “roundtrip,” positing that its basic form—home (a), away (b), back (a’)—finds its most fertile incarnation in the sonata of classical music. In a sonata, the exposition (a) introduces themes in the home key before departing. In the development (b), these themes undergo transformations across various keys, creating a sense of adventure. Key changes, or chromatic shifts, add color and render the material unfamiliar or strange. Finally, the recapitulation (a’) brings the themes back to the home key, altered yet familiar. An exhibition functions similarly. [See Jeffrey Kipnis, “Away from Home,” in Away from Home, ed. Annetta Massie (Columbus, OH: Wexner Center for the Arts, 2003), 40–41.]

  Vipash Purichanont

  An exhibition is a series of objects on display. It manifests a set of relations woven together with images, signs, discourse, and power. It is something brought forth to be looked at, to be walked into, to be experienced immersively. Unlike other display technologies, such as cinema (which requires the viewer to remain still while the images move), an exhibition requires the subject to move through a series of relations. It need not be housed in a confined space, as an exhibition possesses an internal quality that draws viewers in, acts on them, and participates in shaping perception and subjectivity.

  It is also temporal. Even a museum’s “permanent exhibition” must eventually be rehung or rearranged. As a form of display, an exhibition rearranges its viewers as well as its objects; the process of viewing can initiate subjectivation, potentially altering one’s worldview.

  Exhibitions are physical. Yet the rise of virtual reality and the metaverse has made exhibitions in virtual space possible. A third-person view, where the user sees their own avatar from an external perspective, exemplifies an exhibition’s power: it enables both observation and the control of a subject undergoing transformation.

  Bige Örer

  The definition of what constitutes an exhibition and what is contained within it is evolving, with many now seen as dynamic, participatory spaces where art, knowledge, and experience are shared and produced. While traditionally curated by a small group of experts, or a single curator, recent practices have shifted toward a more inclusive, audience-centered approach driven by collaboration, community engagement ,and social participation. Typically showcased in a gallery, museum, or a similar venue, exhibitions are increasingly occupying public and digital spaces, extending their global reach. Exhibitions have the potential to enrich public life by making culture, history, and creativity accessible to everyone, addressing pressing societal issues, fostering critical reflection, and inspiring new ideas.

  Henk Slager

  Until recently, the exhibition was primarily a dispositive, a unitary system of unambiguous “expression” or completed display, reflecting in its fixity the imagined self-sufficiency of the autonomous work of art that the exhibition is supposed to mediate. Over the past decade, a paradigm shift has taken place: exhibitions are now understood much more as platforms for knowledge-in-the-making than as static forms of dissemination. The exhibition has the potential to be a mode of research action.

  Cătălin Gheorghe

  An exhibition is commonly understood as a medium, a setting for artworks, or a statement. It is a display of artifacts, structures, ideas, and gestures in an organized way. The production and presentation of an exhibition are co-dependent on an institutional capacity or self-organized initiative, presented in a given space (i.e., museum, white cube, black box, public space, landscape), and to be received by different audiences. 

  Exhibitions have changed in approach and function over time. They have not only reacted against the idea of a prescribed political or natural order of display but also have questioned their space as a privileged site of capitalist forms of representation. In these conditions, the understanding of “exhibition” as predominantly a medium for displaying evocative manifestations of power would compromise the chances of seeing the exhibition as a process based on imaginative instances of criticism. 

  A radical use of the exhibition would be the transposition (as a trans[ex]position) of the actual political space and historical time of its event modeling, in Michel Foucault’s words, a relational heterotopia but also manifestations of heterocronia. The trans[ex]position of time and space would have the quality to intervene in multiple specific contexts creating different perspectives and unexpected situations. There would be different kinds of trans[ex]positions, from interventions based on hacking, to complex installations based on research. Opening new reflections on the potentiality of an exhibition, the trans[ex]position would make use of xeno-practices, redefining spaces of perception as xeno-spaces (as non-familiar spaces of thought and counteraction).

  Hongjohn Lin

  For any exhibition, we are always searching for something novel, original, or better yet, unprecedented. It is true that there is a plethora of exhibitions across diverse settings—museums, galleries, art fairs, community interventions, and biennials. Moreover, the expanding field of exhibitions is increasingly shifting from the physical to the virtual. Both spectators and art communities eagerly await the next event, just as social media feverishly fabricates fleeting memories of the latest spectacle—fifteen minutes of web fame, all too soon forgotten. We live in an era of hyper-metabolism of memory, where everything must go viral and fade rapidly, even faster than fashion trends. The more exhibitions proliferate, the less spectators seem able to recall what they have seen. This phenomenon promotes “exhibition amnesia,” an ideology that emphasizes the new while neglecting the past. Every new opening closes a door to what came before. The white cube, a dominant mode of exhibition display, symbolically ‘whitewashes’ memory, replacing it with interior installations surrounded by sterile drywalls. Exhibition spectatorship is driven by the demand for the novel, the immediate, and the up-to-the-minute, while past exhibitions serve only as references, easily becoming obsolete and forgotten. The genealogy of exhibitions reflects this shift, intertwined with the rise of modern museums in the 18th century and the development of capitalism, where the burgeoning bourgeoisie played a significant role in shaping museums as “public” spaces. As museums became more accessible, they began to reflect and reinforce the values and ideologies of emerging capitalist society, positioning exhibitions not only as new standardized displays but also as expressions of social relations mediated by capital.

  Carolina Rito

  An exhibition is a selected and curated presentation of objects in an institution of display or in an off-site where the display of artifacts is identified as an exhibition. It is typically curated by someone or a group of people and who are likely identified in the credits of the show as its curators.

• Exhibitionary

  Nina Liebenberg

  The exhibitionary relates to the power structures (mostly unseen) that accompany the making of and running of an exhibition or institution with an exhibition program. The “exhibitionary complex,” first introduced by Tony Bennett [“The Exhibitionary Complex,” New Formations, no. 4 (Spring 1988), 73–102], was revealed in practice through the work of artist-curators (such as Daniel Buren, Marcel Broodthaers, Hans Haacke, Andrea Fraser, and Fred Wilson) practicing institutional critique from the 1960s onward. Students in the curatorial program at the University of Cape Town, in which I taught for many years, engage with the exhibitionary by interrogating how the apartheid ideology influenced the categorization, storage, and display of the collections housed in the city’s museums and institutions. They are then asked to consider the task of local curators in relation to justice and restoration, latent collections and absence, as well as public vs. private space, along with ownership and agency.

  Vipash Purichanont

  The exhibitionary is an expanded notion of the exhibition. Unlike an exhibition, which is meant to be seen, the exhibitionary remains hidden from sight; its defining feature is its invisibility. Its lack of physical presence allows it to slip out of institutional spaces and into everyday life—that is, into the realm of the ordinary and unmarked. The exhibitionary captures things and places them in relation, much like a curator does in an exhibition. Often unwittingly, individuals engage in the exhibitionary of daily life. It is a display of relationships within life itself. Like a museum exhibition, the exhibitionary must be maintained, updated, and sometimes rehung. It transforms the individual into an object on display while obliging one to curate one’s own life—a fitting epitome of life under the attention economy.

  Bige Örer

  The term “exhibitionary” refers to a system of protocols, institutions, and frameworks that shape how exhibitions are conceived, presented, and experienced. It highlights the often-unseen mechanisms behind these presentations, unfolding power relations, historical narratives, and institutional forces that determine what gets exhibited and how. In this sense, the exhibitionary is an invisible but pervasive structure that extends beyond institutional spaces, influencing everyday life, affecting how people understand and engage with the world around them. By challenging traditional power dynamics, the exhibitionary fosters collaboration and co-creation while questioning established norms. It reflects and shapes cultural practices in an ongoing cycle of reinterpretation and critique.

  Henk Slager

  In the current paradigm, new forms of interaction (collaboration, co-production, current visual technologies), and transgressive practices (crossovers between the different topologies of visual and performative art, oscillations between various epistemic registers) are taking place. Such modes of meaning-making require more dynamic and expanded exhibition formats, such as archives, community-based projects, concept exhibitions, meeting spaces, and interventions in the public space. See, for example, Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics (London: Routledge, 1995).

  Cătălin Gheorghe

  The exhibitionary apparatus generates certain perceptions of its intentions that often obscure its actual political privileges. It seeks to influence beliefs, reasons, and behaviors; and its rationale and modus operandi are ordering discourses that mask its power structure. These are consequences of its paradoxical presence, acting from a political distance but speaking in full proximity to the audience. In this way, its dominant normative views are mediated through direct concrete displays that, in effect, regulate its viewers’ perceptions.  This only underscores the fact that its constitutive colonial derivation inflects it with a deeply negative political condition of hierarchical power.

  Even if the exhibitionary moment seems to be not only ideological but also epistemologically compromised, there are substituent chances to overcome institutional conspiracies. Imagining a new, even radical, exhibitionary (social) design that would presuppose the use of present exhibition infrastructures to mediate reformations and reparations, or even revolutionary formulations against the reproduction of the exhibitionary’s underlying privileges.

  Hongjohn Lin

  In contrast to conventional exhibitions housed in the white cube, the "exhibitionary" moves beyond the gallery ideology, expanding into new forms of public engagement through screenings, performances, experiments, talks, and gatherings. These participatory actions reveal how the gallery ideology is constructed and how (art) histories are generated. The exhibitionary, in short, exposes the backstage mechanisms through which realities are shaped. By reconfiguring the dynamics between acting and enactment, the exhibitionary denaturalizes traditional exhibition formats. The conventional roles of artist, spectator, and curator are rewritten, disrupting the symbolic order to reveal how exhibitions construct reality. This approach aligns with various contemporary curatorial practices, including institutional critique, performativity, criticality, the educational turn, and the expanded field of exhibition-making.

  Carolina Rito

  The exhibitionary is the network of protocols and regimes (material, conceptual, epistemic, institutional, etc.) through which exhibitions are seen, conceptualized, and signified. Despite being mainly invisible, the exhibitionary is made manifest in very concrete forms. An exhibition’s arrangement of objects and discourse can be understood as the manifested artifact of the exhibitionary. In other words, and similar to Michel Foucault’s notion of “episteme,” the exhibitionary is a regime of intelligibility that pertains to displays as historical constructs. We can say that the defining frame of an exhibition is always a subset of the exhibitionary, which cannot be contained or even provide a totalizing view. Simply, the exhibitionary is the apparatus through which exhibitions surface or are made to surface. Instead, it is larger than the sum of its parts, in a cycle of constant evolution and transforming norms. As Keller Easterling has written about infrastructure, it can be said as well about the exhibitionary that it “is too big and not at one and the same place. It cannot be addressed through its shape or outline, but rather via its disposition—potentials unfolding in time and territory.” The exhibitionary depends on its activation in order to make sense.

Curating/The Curatorial →

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• Contributors

  Nina Liebenberg is a South African curator, currently conducting her post-doctoral research at the University of the Arts, Helsinki. Before moving to Finland, Liebenberg spent the last ten years working at the University of Cape Town’s Centre for Curating the Archive, convening a selection of courses for its curatorial program. She uses curation as methodology to explore various overlaps and connections between diverse university departments, drawing on their disciplinary objects collections to curate exhibitions that surface uncanny cross-disciplinary connections and extend the meaning of how these materials are understood in their host departments. She is a member of the Curatorial Studies Workshop, part of the Expanded Artistic Research Network (EARN).

  Henk Slager’s focus has been on research and visual art for the last twenty years. He was a Lecturer at De Appel Curatorial Program (1995-2020), Visiting Professor of Artistic Research (Uniarts Helsinki 2010-2015, 2024-), and Dean of MaHKU Utrecht Graduate School of Visual Art and Design (HKU Utrecht 2003-2018). He is currently working for the same school on the development of a practice-based doctoral program. Slager co-initiated the European Artistic Research Network (EARN), a network investigating the consequences of artistic research for current art education through symposia, expert meetings, and presentations. Departing from a similar focus on artistic research he published The Pleasure of Research, an overview of curatorial research projects (a.o. Shanghai Biennale, 2008; Tbilisi Triennial, 2012; Aesthetic Jam Taipei Biennial, 2014; 5th Guangzhou Triennial, 2015; Research Pavilion Venice, 2015-2019; and 9th Bucharest Biennale, 2020). A follow-up publication will be presented in 2025. Slager is currently co-convening the 6th Asia Triennial Manchester (2025).

  Cătălin Gheorghe is a theoretician, curator, editor, and Professor of Curatorial Research and Practices at “George Enescu” National University of the Arts in Iași, Romania. He is the editor of Vector Publications, including the recent volumes Learning by curating. Current trajectories in critical curatorial research (2022) and Exhibitionary Acts of Political Imagination, co-edited with Mick Wilson (2021). He is also the curator of Vector Studio, a platform for critical research and art production based on the understanding of art as experimental journalism. He is a member of the Curatorial Studies Workshop, part of the Expanded Artistic Research Network (EARN).

  Hongjohn Lin is an artist, curator, and Professor at Taipei National University of the Arts, holding a PhD in Arts and Humanities from New York University. His notable exhibitions include the Taipei Biennial (2004, 2012), Asian Manchester Triennial (2008), and Guangzhou Triennial (2015). Lin curated the Taiwan Pavilion’s Atopia at the Venice Biennial (2007) and co-curated the Taipei Biennial with Tirdad Zolghadr (2010). He authored introductions for the Chinese editions of Art Power (Boris Groys) and Artificial Hells (Claire Bishop), and his publications include Poetics of Curating (2018). Lin is the founding editor of Curatography and is currently curating Asian Manchester Triennial 2025. He is a member of the Curatorial Studies Workshop, part of the Expanded Artistic Research Network (EARN).

  Carolina Rito is Professor of Creative Practice Research at the Research Centre for Arts, Memory, and Communities, Coventry University, UK. She is a researcher and curator whose work is situated at the intersection of knowledge production, the curatorial, and contested historical narratives. Rito is an Executive Board Member of the Midlands Higher Education & Culture Forum and a Research Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary History (IHC), Universidade Nova de Lisboa. She has served as the Executive Editor of The Contemporary Journal and has published in international journals such as King’s Review, Mousse Magazine,  Wrong Wrong, and The Curatorial. From 2017 to 2019, Rito was Head of Public Programs and Research at Nottingham Contemporary, leading the partnership with Nottingham Trent University and the University of Nottingham. She holds a PhD in Curatorial/Knowledge from Goldsmiths, University of London, where she also taught from 2014 to 2016. She lectures internationally—in Europe, South America, and the Middle East—on her research and curatorial studies. She is a member of the Curatorial Studies Workshop, part of the Expanded Artistic Research Network (EARN).

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Walking & Talking with Jacqueline E. Burckhardt

Bige Örer, Jacqueline E. Burckhardt • 6/17/25

• Video Summary

  Walking & Talking, hosted by Istanbul- and London-based curator and organizer Bige Örer, is a series of video-recorded conversational experiences based on walking with each guest curator in the same location or in two different places in the world. Some of these conversations address broad societal, cultural, or philosophical questions, while others may unfold more intimate concerns and flow with inner journeys. The walks are imagined as poems shared between the participants on their shared paths.

  
  In this episode, recorded in London on December 10, 2024, Örer speaks with curator Jacqueline E. Burckhardt. Their conversation centers on the idea of “writing” and how Burckhardt’s 2022 publication, La mia commedia dell’arte, brought out by Edition Patrick Frey (Zürich), reveals her multifaceted approach to engaging with art. Together, they reflect on the legacy of the influential art magazine Parkett, which Burckhardt co-founded, and discuss the dynamics and challenges of curatorial work—particularly in the context of artist commissions and research-driven projects. The episode concludes with Burckhardt reading Meret Oppenheim’s poem “Faithful Captain,” offered in response to Örer’s poetic invitation.

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• About Jacqueline E. Burckhardt

  Jacqueline E. Burckhardt is a curator, writer, and art historian whose work spans the fields of restoration, editorial practice, public art, and art education. She has long focused on fostering interdisciplinary dialogue between contemporary art, architecture, and cultural institutions. She co-founded and co-edited the influential art magazine Parkett (1984–2017), a platform for international artistic exchange. From 1999 to 2006, Burkhardt served as president of the Swiss Federal Commission for the Arts, and between 2004 and 2008, she taught at the Accademia di Architettura in Mendrisio, Switzerland. She also curated site-specific commissions for the Novartis Campus in Basel (2005–2015) and from 2008 to 2016, she was director of the Summer Academy at the Zentrum Paul Klee. Trained as a conservator at the Istituto Centrale del Restauro in Rome, she holds a PhD in art history from the University of Zurich. In 2024, the English edition of her book My Commedia dell’arte, also from Edition Patrick Frey.

• About Bige Örer

  Bige Örer is an Istanbul- and London-based independent curator and writer dedicated to amplifying the voices and visions of artists. Her curatorial practice is rooted in centering creativity and artistic perspectives, ensuring that artists remain at the heart of every exhibition and project she oversees. From 2008 to 2024, Örer served as the director of the Istanbul Biennial, where she transformed the biennial into a dynamic platform for artistic collaboration and intellectual exchange. She was instrumental in developing programs that broadened the biennial’s reach, particularly focusing on children and youth, while fostering artistic engagement throughout Turkey and internationally. In 2022, Örer curated Once upon a time…, the Füsun Onur exhibition at the Pavilion of Turkey for the 59th Venice Biennale. Her curatorial projects also include Flâneuses (Institut français Istanbul, 2017), an ongoing series involving walks with artists. Örer played a key role in establishing the Istanbul Biennial Production and Research Program, the SaDe Artist Support Fund, and coordinated initiatives such as the Cité des Arts Turkey Workshop Artist Residency Program and the Turkish Pavilion at the International Art and Architecture Exhibitions of the Venice Biennale. Örer has contributed articles to numerous publications and taught at Istanbul Bilgi University. She has also served as a consultant and jury member for various international art institutions, and from 2013 to 2024, she was the vice president of the International Biennial Association. During this time, she also contributed to the editorial and programming board of the association’s journal, PASS. She is a member of the Curatorial Studies Workshop, part of the Expanded Artistic Research Network (EARN).

Walking & Talking with Théo-Mario Coppola

Bige Örer, Théo-Mario Coppola • 3/25/25

• Video Summary

  Walking & Talking, hosted by Istanbul- and London-based curator and organizer Bige Örer, is a series of video-recorded conversational experiences based on walking with each guest curator in the same location or in two different places in the world. Some of these conversations address broad societal, cultural, or philosophical questions, while others may unfold more intimate concerns and flow with inner journeys. The walks are imagined as poems shared between the participants on their shared paths.

  In this thoughtful conversation between Örer and curator and arts writer Théo-Mario Coppola, recorded on November 30, 2024 in Paris, they focus on the notion of “the commons” and how the arts ecosystem can be reimagined with principles of equality, fairness, and transformation. As they walk through the city, starting from Rue du Liban and ending at Rue de Palestine, a meeting point and a destination chosen by Coppola in response to the current geopolitical context, they reflect on the political, social, and cultural dynamics that shape the city’s names and experiences. They explore ideas about redefining the infrastructures of art and exhibition-making as well as the curatorial realm to create a more inclusive and diversity-based approach. The conversation ends with Coppola reading a poem by Mejdulene B. Shomali, “my mother says this would have never happened if we stayed in Palestine,” responding to Örer’s poetic invitation. The video blends more theoretical dialogue with the intimate experience of walking and thinking together, exploring how personal and societal histories influence the world of curating and art.

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• About Théo-Mario Coppola

  Théo-Mario Coppola is a curator and arts writer based in Paris and Vienna. Through their intersectional practice, they support discursive, community- and research-based methodologies by BIPOC, crip, queer, and women art practitioners, and frequently showcase time-based practices, including lens-based works and performances. Seeking to encourage fair and equitable work conditions in the cultural field, Coppola has regularly provided expertise on curatorial and critical affairs, including knowledge building, ethical governance, strategy development, inclusive management, and greater diversity within the context of government ministry advisory groups and sectoral and umbrella organizations. In France, they successfully campaigned for the registration of exhibitions as intellectual work in the French Intellectual Property Code and for the introduction and widespread use of a standard work contract between curators and institutions.

  Among Coppolla’s many activities, they co-organized the “In solidarity with Ukraine” special assembly at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2022; curated the eleventh edition of the Momentum biennale in Moss, Norway, in 2021; and the third edition of the Nuit Blanche arts festival at Villa Medici in Rome in 2018. Coppola founded and curated HOTEL EUROPA, an annual series of exhibitions and programs (Vilnius, 2017; Brussels, 2018; and Tbilisi, 2019). They have served as the artistic and executive director of Collezione Taurisano, an international private contemporary art collection focused on political art and based in Naples from 2017 to late 2018. In parallel, they were the artistic director of Primo Piano and Intermezzo, two private initiatives supporting international artists through a joint residency and exhibition program in Paris. See https://www.theomariocoppola.xyz for more.

• About Bige Örer

  Bige Örer is an Istanbul- and London-based independent curator and writer dedicated to amplifying the voices and visions of artists. Her curatorial practice is rooted in centering creativity and artistic perspectives, ensuring that artists remain at the heart of every exhibition and project she oversees. From 2008 to 2024, Örer served as the director of the Istanbul Biennial, where she transformed the biennial into a dynamic platform for artistic collaboration and intellectual exchange. She was instrumental in developing programs that broadened the biennial’s reach, particularly focusing on children and youth, while fostering artistic engagement throughout Turkey and internationally. In 2022, Örer curated Once upon a time…, the Füsun Onur exhibition at the Pavilion of Turkey for the 59th Venice Biennale. Her curatorial projects also include Flâneuses (Institut français Istanbul, 2017), an ongoing series involving walks with artists. Örer played a key role in establishing the Istanbul Biennial Production and Research Program, the SaDe Artist Support Fund, and coordinated initiatives such as the Cité des Arts Turkey Workshop Artist Residency Program and the Turkish Pavilion at the International Art and Architecture Exhibitions of the Venice Biennale. Örer has contributed articles to numerous publications and taught at Istanbul Bilgi University. She has also served as a consultant and jury member for various international art institutions, and from 2013 to 2024, she was the vice president of the International Biennial Association. During this time, she also contributed to the editorial and programming board of the association’s journal, PASS. She is a member of the Curatorial Studies Workshop, part of the Expanded Artistic Research Network (EARN).

Walking & Talking with Alia Swastika

Bige Örer, Alia Swastika • 2/1/25

• Video Summary

  Walking & Talking, hosted by Istanbul- and London-based curator and organizer Bige Örer, is a series of video-recorded conversational experiences based on walking with each guest curator in the same location or in two different places in the world. Some of these conversations address broad societal, cultural, or philosophical questions, while others may unfold more intimate concerns and flow with inner journeys. The walks are imagined as poems shared between the participants on their shared paths.

  We begin with a conversation recorded last June (new conversations will launch soon). In this insightful conversation with Alia Swastika—a curator, writer, and researcher based in Yogyakarta, Indonesia—she shares her curatorial journey, emphasizing her focus on decoloniality and feminism. As she strolls through the streets of Yogyakarta, while Örer does the same in London, Swastika reflects on how the political upheaval during the fall of Suharto's regime in 1998 shaped her perspectives on art and politics. She discusses feeling isolated in high school due to her peers' lack of political interest, leading her to spend time in libraries and art galleries where she engaged deeply with political movements and artistic expression. She then delves into her work with the Jogja Biennial and the Equator Biennial, highlighting efforts to reconnect with the Global South and foster collaborations among artists from regions with shared colonial histories. Swastika speaks about her methodologies and challenges as a co-curator for the upcoming Sharjah Biennial, aiming to create meaningful, interconnected projects that explore themes of collectivism, individuality, and transnational feminist connections. Throughout the conversation, the dialogue emphasizes the importance of creating spaces for critical perspectives, multiplying narratives, and supporting marginalized voices in the art world.

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• About Alia Swastika

  Alia Swastika is a curator, researcher, and writer whose practice over the last ten years has expanded on issues and perspectives of decoloniality and feminism. Her different projects involve decentralizing art, rewriting art history, and encouraging local activism. She works as the Director of the Biennale Jogja Foundation, Yogyakarta, and has focused her research on Indonesian female artists during Indonesia’s New Order. Some of this research was published in 2019. Swastika established and was the program director for Ark Galerie, Yogyakarta (2007–2017). She was co-curator for the Biennale Jogja XI Equator #1 (2011); co-artistic director of the 9th Gwangju Biennale (2012); and roundtable curator for contemporary art exhibitions for the Europalia Arts Festival (2017), including presentations at Oude Kerk, Amsterdam; M HKA, Antwerp; and SMAK Ghent, Belgium. 

• About Bige Örer

  Bige Örer is an Istanbul- and London-based independent curator and writer dedicated to amplifying the voices and visions of artists. Her curatorial practice is rooted in centering creativity and artistic perspectives, ensuring that artists remain at the heart of every exhibition and project she oversees. From 2008 to 2024, Örer served as the director of the Istanbul Biennial, where she transformed the biennial into a dynamic platform for artistic collaboration and intellectual exchange. She was instrumental in developing programs that broadened the biennial’s reach, particularly focusing on children and youth, while fostering artistic engagement throughout Turkey and internationally. In 2022, Örer curated Once upon a time…, the Füsun Onur exhibition at the Pavilion of Turkey for the 59th Venice Biennale. Her curatorial projects also include Flâneuses (Institut français Istanbul, 2017), an ongoing series involving walks with artists. Örer played a key role in establishing the Istanbul Biennial Production and Research Program, the SaDe Artist Support Fund, and coordinated initiatives such as the Cité des Arts Turkey Workshop Artist Residency Program and the Turkish Pavilion at the International Art and Architecture Exhibitions of the Venice Biennale. Örer has contributed articles to numerous publications and taught at Istanbul Bilgi University. She has also served as a consultant and jury member for various international art institutions, and from 2013 to 2024, she was the vice president of the International Biennial Association. During this time, she also contributed to the editorial and programming board of the association’s journal, PASS. She is a member of the Curatorial Studies Workshop, part of the Expanded Artistic Research Network (EARN).