Fugitive Archives, Radical Care and Slow Encounters

Fugitive Archives, Radical Care and Slow Encounters looks at questions of curatorial practice, modes of representation and narrativity in exhibition-making processes. Taking the policy brief Towards a Decolonial Curatorial Practice written in response to the exhibition Re(as)sisting Narratives (2016) as a point of departure, I will weave together reflections and thoughts that grapple with the possibilities and complexities of decolonial modes of curating in South Africa and the Netherlands. In doing so, specific attention will be paid to the use of archives in exhibition making. I will discuss the work of Burning Museum, Athi-Patra Ruga, Judith Westerveld, Toni Stuart and Kurt Orderson that featured in the exhibition. The ways in which artists incorporate the archive in their work, negotiate access to marginalized histories, and practice care are imperative to conceptualizing decolonial directions in curatorial practice. Part of this inquiry means thinking towards slower and gentler forms of working. This allows a particular attentiveness to material and process while examining the conditions of the neoliberal art work that dictate productivity. My focus on care within my practice stems from the need to examine which ways of working and creating are most sustainable. Overall this talk will explore and consider decolonial practices within shifting geographies from a feminist and queer lens.