Panel: On the Feminist Curating of Women Photographers’ Work
Participants: Karen Cordero Reiman, and Abby Chen
Moderator: Grace Aneiza Ali
What are the challenges of curating and collecting women photographers’ work? In this panel, Karen Cordero explores strategies for activating archives containing works by women photographers from a feminist curatorial perspective, focusing on two particular cases that draw on her curatorial, pedagogical experience in Mexico with the exhibitions Mujeres… ¿y qué más?: Activando el archivo Ana Victoria Jiménez (2011) and Autorretrato con consciencia: Mujeres, género y feminismos en el archivo del Consejo Mexicano de Fotografía (2021).
Following an ongoing series by Shanghai-based artist Gao Ling and the work of the collective LING & COMMA (that she was a member of), Abby Chen highlights the importance of imagination to archiving and displaying Ling’s interdisciplinary practice, spanning live performance, online social media engagement, participatory street intervention, collaborative protest, and staged photography. Amelia Jones critically evidences the ways in which feminism can and must embrace a larger project beyond displaying the work of women artists—by examining the process of curating the live art and queer performance of artist Ron Athey. Defining feminist curating as a form of activism, these presentations compel us to displace the focus of attention from the images to the social interactions and the creative process itself.
This program is presented thanks to generous support from One Sotheby’s International Realty.
About the Speakers
Karen Cordero Reiman is an independent curator, art historian, and writer based in Mexico City. She is the author of numerous publications in her areas of specialization: twentieth and twenty-first century Mexican art; the relationship between the so-called “fine” and “popular” arts in Mexico; the historiography of Mexican art; body, gender, and sexual identity in Mexican art; and museological and curatorial discourses in Mexico.
Abby Chen is Senior Associate Curator and Head of Contemporary Art at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Previously, she served for over a decade as the curator and artistic director at the Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco. Under her leadership, the organization was transformed into an open and process-driven platform for contemporary art.
Amelia Jones is Professor and Vice Dean of Academics and Research, Roski School of Art & Design, USC, and is a curator and scholar of contemporary art, performance, and feminist/sexuality studies. Her 2021 book In Between Subjects: A Critical Genealogy of Queer Performance explores the history of performance art and queer theory since the 1950s, from a queer feminist point of view.
Grace Aneiza Ali is Curator and Assistant Professor in the Departments of Art and Art History at Florida State University. Her curatorial, research, and teaching practices center on curatorial activism, art and social justice, art and migration, global contemporary art, and art of the Caribbean diaspora with a focus on her homeland Guyana. Ali also serves as Curator-at-Large for the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute in New York.
