Feminist curatorial strategies for collective constellations

The curation of artworks and exhibitions as a form of knowledge production can potentialize transformative ways of knowing and narrating but can also foster unlearning to learn anew. This session is curated by the editorial collective of the journal Feminist Art Practices and Research. COSMOS, founded in 2025, to mobilize its commitment to other ways of seeing-feeling-thinking-making grounded in regenerative feminist art that is open to a diversity of alliances and positionalities. It seeks to address the potential of attentive and caring practices grounded in a feminist politics of relation that has been described by Aimee Carrillo Rowe (2009) as a ‘constellation of self, other, connection, consciousness.’ Curatorial strategies have the capability to generate and activate forms of collectivity in which alliances are forged to catalyse becoming in relation to each other, human and other-than-human. How does feminist curation attest to and reconfigure the affects, materialities and stories that bind us? What are examples of curatorial practices founded in feminist kinships that enable caring collaborations and model non-hierarchical modes of interaction that address difference in a generous and dialogical manner? How do we move with trust towards allyship? Srilatha Batliwala (2021), summarising the findings of a case study on the principles and practices of feminist allyship conducted by CREA, a feminist human rights organization, foregrounds equal voices, representation and power between all the allies.

This session invites contributions by art historians, artists, and theorists that engage with specific feminist curatorial strategies that envision diverse constellations of collectives striving for kinships.