Ort Gallery have announced a new partnership with two emerging curators.
We are excited to announce that we have partnered with the International Curators Forum (ICF) to appoint 2 emerging curators to work with us and selected artists on a new project called ‘Emergence(y)’ during 2022. Following the turbulent year of 2020 and the ongoing covid crisis, the curators will explore the themes of Emergence, Care and/or Warmth. They will bring their own research interests and working methodology with them and they will also decide how they want to work together or what they want to create, whether that be an exhibition, an event, something online, a partnership with another gallery, or any other format of their choosing.
Orphée Kashala is a Birmingham based curator. His curatorial practice promotes care, inclusion, empathy, equality and understanding by telling stories that explore and challenge our collective perception of the human experience.
Since 2020, Orphée has taken on the role of Creative Producer at Maokwo(a Belgrade Theatre springboard organisation based in Coventry) as part of the young leadership programme for emerging young artists from migrant backgrounds. Currently, Maokwo have partnered with the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, where Orphée is co-curating an exhibition exploring key national collections, co-organising artists’ lead workshops, developing project ideas and curatorial skills, whilst also co-creating a new provision for artists in Coventry. In September 2021, he curated his first exhibition titled “Survivor’s Guilt” for the Coventry Migrant Centre, as part of Coventry City of Culture; which was an exploration of the bittersweet memories and lived realities of African migrants living in the UK via photography, videography, installation and poetry.
Sarah Francis is a Leeds based Artist Curator who focuses on bringing under-recognised artists and narratives to the public, using empathy and warmth to build self-confidence in creatives left behind by the mainstream system. Fascinated by complex possibilities lying dormant in ‘familiar’ environments, setting a challenging dialogue between cultural identity and the inner worlds which we as artists manifest within our work. This conceptual framework draws parallels between artists from differing socio-cultural worlds, whose work follows similar lines in metaphysical realms. Francis’ interpretation of the curator is that of a caretaker of other worlds, working in collaboration as the tour guide and storyteller, bringing these converging manifestations to our physical spaces.
Francis’ artwork centres around her neurodiverse and queer identity, building her own language and worlds to explore and understand ‘how I made me’; a reference to an early body of work that investigated her inner trauma and re-articulation of her current self. Her work has been shortlisted for the Saatchi Gallery’s Art of Giving Prize, selected by Richard Billingham for Curator’s Choice Noise Young Talent 2009, and recognised in Aesthetica’s 100 Best Contemporary Artists in Europe. In addition to her work, Sarah Francis is the Founder and Director of Aire Place Studios, Leeds.