Stella Sideli in conversation with Thomas Dukes

24 January 2023 / 6:30-8pm (including a short break)

Mapping Curatorial Practices: on Laziness, Difference and Belonging. 

Limited capacity. Please pre-book HERE.
£3  / free  for anyone on a low-income and for Castlefield Gallery Associates.
This is an in-person event at Castlefield Gallery.

Beginning with an introduction to their current practice in particular Sideli’s research project Mapping Practices: Exploring Ethical Methodologies for Curating Plural Gender Perspectives in Contemporary Art (learn more), Sideli and Dukes will open up a discussion about diversity, inclusion and belonging in relation to curatorial methods. They will take their shared areas of interest as starting points to consider ways of negotiating these issues in the context of institutional programming, asking questions such as: What is diversity exactly? Shouldn’t (creating) diversity also mean (creating a sense of) belonging? In the process of operating according to diversity and inclusion policies as a cultural institution, is there a risk of further excluding and tokenizing certain groups of people? How can voices of difference be truly, ethically represented and platformed in an institutional context, and what is the role of a curator in this context? What might a feminist or queer institution look like? 

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Stella Sideli is an independent curator, writer, researcher and producer working in the UK, Europe and the Mediterranean. She is concerned with the intersection of institutional programmes and feminist/queer theories, decolonial practices and ethics of curating; the relationship between curator and artist; emerging technologies, capitalism and the aesthetics of digital culture, with attention to interdisciplinary practices. 

www.stellasideli.net
Instagram: @stellasideli

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Thomas Dukes is a curator and researcher based in Manchester.  He is currently a doctoral candidate, funded by the AHRC NWCDTP Collaborative Doctoral Award, working with Manchester School of Art and Castlefield Gallery.

Thomas has worked as a curator for Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool, and Cultural Hubs – Arts in Libraries. His doctoral research is focused on Castlefield Gallery’s archive, exploring a 35-year history of the gallery’s exhibition history. His research involves developing curatorial tactics by which the nature of the archive might be uncovered, discussed, and kept in negotiation – looking for what Castlefield Gallery has meant to the artists and audiences around them.