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Sharjah Biennial 16 co-curator and Director, Cubitt; Curator at Large, Public Practice, Serpentine Amal Khalaf moderating panel, titled The Catalytic Power of Collectives, with Ivet Ćurlin (Artistic Director, Kunsthalle Wien and member, What, How & for Whom); Sofia Villena Araya, Deniz Kirkali, Amelie Wedel (topsoil); Mirwan Andan (ruangrupa) at March Meeting. Sharjah Art Foundation, 2024. Photo: Motaz Mawid
In the last 50 years, art and curatorial collectives have carved open new spaces for collaborative research, discourse-making and cultural practice. This panel examines the impulse towards collectivity within the art world, manifesting resonances between collectives and social movements as multitudinous sites of popular resistance, agency and critical inquiry.
Against a backdrop of deepening inequality and scarcity, this discussion asks: How are collectives re-imagining self-organisation and non-competitive, horizontal approaches to creativity? How are they challenging western-centric trends, tropes and neoliberal cultural values through art and exhibition-making while also unsettling notions of creative labour and authorship? What are the future implications for cultural production and consumption in a largely commercialised art market?
This panel unpacks collective worlding practices in art stemming from grassroots solidarities and an ethics of radical care that seek to imagine and realise more equitable and humanist futures. It asks how we can create together and collectively make new imaginings possible.