Zoé Whitley

Biography

Curator and writer Zoé Whitley is the Director of the Chisenhale Gallery, London (2020–ongoing). She previously worked as a curator at the Hayward Gallery (2019–2020), Tate (2013–2019) and Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) (2003–2013). She also led talks and designed studio visits as an Associate Lecturer, Institut d’études supérieures des arts, Paris (2011–2013).

Whitley’s curatorial projects include Cathy Wilkes’ British Council commission in the British Pavilion, 58th Venice Biennale (2019); Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, Tate Modern (2017); and The Shadows Took Shape, Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2013–2014). She also worked on site-specific commissions and temporary exhibitions with El Anatsui, Mat Collishaw, Lubaina Himid, Anselm Kiefer and Yinka Shonibare, among others. In addition to commissioning artwork, organising exhibitions, giving talks and staging public creative events, she lectures internationally on visual culture.

She was a V&A Research Department Art History Exchange Fellow, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK (2008–2009), and also received a fellowship from the Center for Curatorial Leadership, New York (2008). She has served as a Turner Prize juror (2021).

Whitley earned a BA in Art History from Swarthmore College, USA (2001), an MA in the History of Design from the Royal College of Art, London (2003), and a PhD from the University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK (2018). Her postgraduate research focused on Black representation in fashion magazines, institutional critique, racialised space and contemporary art of the African Diaspora.

Born in 1979 in Washington, DC, Whitley lives and works in London.

SAF participation:
March Meeting 2023