This will be an ongoing blog post about the Queer Curation course with the NODE Center in Berlin – sponsored by the SU- UAL.
Wednesday 7th May. I’ve just had the first session of my NODE curation course on Zoom. I am in tears, it was so lovely. 23 people from around the world all doing amazing things and all Queer. It was the first time in 60 years when I thought bloody hell I am home… that’s both very happy and quite sad…
Today was just an intro session with my fellow course members from all over the world … Japan, Oz, Canada, India, USA, Iceland, Spain, Italy, Romania, France, Germany, Switzerland and of course the UAL contingent in the UK (though I only got that Elizabetta was CSM, so I am trying to figure out who the other one is?)
Already our course leader Sylvia Sadzinski is saying this is as much about Queer Theory as it is about Curation. That accessibility and community are an essential part of queering. That queering is a concept for living. Just beautiful!
As my queer friends scatter into the closet to hide from transphobic violence on the street, online and from global heteronomative power structures. Here, on Zoom, was a little oasis of tranquillity.
links for this week:
https://www.cooperhewitt.org/cooper-hewitt-guidelines-for-image-description/
https://www.eurozine.com/the-cuir-turn/
14th May – I wrote my art Manifesto today https://mxdp.blog/2025/05/14/abstracted-materialism-a-manifesto-for-a-queer-ecology-of-art/
I wish I had seen todays Queer Curation lecture a year ago… I got there on my own, but it was lovely to have the affimations today.
We cantered through Queer Theory, Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality, Crip Theory and Fat Studies.
New to me were Low Theory and Failure and Animal Theory, though I think I may have touched on them and not known their name.
We have a wonderful reading list:
Some I know, others new!
The chat was informative and global. We taked about Queering as something you do, as a verb.
This is a primer for queering curation.
We looked at the idea of Queer in other cultures.
Here are some snippets:
In addition to ‘cuir’ in South America, ‘cuyr’ in the Andes (as a play on cuy)… in Mexico, “joto” as a reclaiming of a slur (various origin stories, including one about a “J” block of a prison where queer men were imprisoned).
In India Hijra or Kinner, there are a seperate low economic class of 3rd gender folx, with their own pride and culture.
In Native spaces, the term ‘Indigequeer’ is newly coined which is an intersectional way of identifying, apart from and similar to Two Spirit identities
Book recommendation: ‘The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability’ by Jasbir K. Puar
Links from our conversations this week:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtbFKjL04dw
https://www.armandosebastian.com/pages/artist-statement
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2c6fforlrHxZIifbGudOWk?si=a6741669ede94715
https://ojs.scholarsportal.info/ontariotechu/index.php/id/issue/view/42
My homework was to talk about a piece of art that had been ‘queered’ I hope you like my choice:
https://mxdp.blog/2025/05/18/queering-art-death-of-a-virgin/
20th May – I was only on sound and chat for this class, still it was extrodinarly transformative and it fed into helping me understand my own practice. I was able to develope this post and join the dots.
https://mxdp.blog/2025/05/12/why/
As a class we looked at abstraction as a queer act, camp art and radical, transtemporal and abstract drag… it was like looking in a mirror, I resemble this!
Links from todays chat:
https://soundcloud.com/artquest/the-den-1-sop-2020
https://www.artspace.org.au/banner-series/r-e-a-gari-language
https://strangeattractor.co.uk/shoppe/our-fatal-magic/
https://www.taishani.com/cac-1
https://www.platformspace.net/home/abstraction-is-a-privilege
https://inclusartiz.org/en/residente/manauara-clandestina-2/
https://youtu.be/cVSXgmZQezY?si=ZaxGPIqdDL8f4IeR
My homework is to Queer the last exhibition I attended… I am looking forward to that!
https://mxdp.blog/2025/05/20/queering-an-exhibition/
28th May
This course is going way too quickly and I don’t want it to end… If you get a chance do this course…
In the chat this week…
https://www.aam-us.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/2019-Welcoming-Guidelines.pdf
The gallery I work for uses Cultural Mediation Kits to provide context that might not be familiar with audiences.
One reason I find Félix González-Torres so interesting. His instructions (e.g. candy portraits, timelines, but also many other works) specifically allow/empower curators to make certain decisions or even to extend the art over time, the art is changing even beyond the artist’s lifetime.
I don’t believe viewpoint neutrality exists, so I love the idea of claiming.
White cubes are full of art by old white able bodied cis men
Hierarchical distinction between artists and works, neutral curatorial approach, linear path, white cube effect, seriousness, pretentiousness…
They rather create a distance between the work and the audience, instead of creating connections
Galleries and museums are a prison for art works
There’s also more obvious queer representation in broader exhibitions at the National Portrait Gallery now, including for example the Brilliant Exiles exhibit which is about American women in Paris (1920s-40s, I think)…
https://www.transformerdc.org/
I was at the Schwules Museum twenty-four years ago and it kind of had a cabinet of curiosities feel then. I understand it’s in a new building now and I imagine has evolved a lot…
https://www.nylo.is/en-us/exhibitions/til-synis-hinsegin-umfram-a%C3%B0ra
Our homework was to make a Queer exhibition…
https://mxdp.blog/2025/05/31/fearless-futures-for-the-void-an-art-rave/
Our course leader shared some of her work, I hope she doesn’t mind me sharing but its good stuff…
11th of June
This final class was delayed due to illness, but it was cool as it meant we had an extra week before it was all finished!
This class talked about what might me Queer today might not be Queer tommorow.
I loved the term Queerating and feel I shall adopt that title for my curatorial practice.
I made most of these reports with reference to the chat notes. This week was much more interactive, as I think we all felt the parting.
These are transcripts of my written notes. They are minimalist yet provocative.
Museum/gallery as a doing word…
Exhibition as a performative moment.
How we work together, the rules we follow…Question Everything
Look at two perspectives on an artwork (let them ‘tell’ their ideas)
Don’t assume a structure.
Revel in the multiplicity of perspectives.
Touch, Feel and Smell.
Carry, move around.
V&A’s Summer exhibition looking a little Queer!!!
What does it mean to curate, to ‘care’ for a work?
Who do you care for? The Artist, the gallery, your own perspective?
Is a curator’s purpose to bring people together?
Curating as hosting and hospitality.
Generosity!
‘Make space at the table’
Everyone sees themselves as the curator, the gallery, the artist, the administrator, and the funder.
Visual metaphors… Challenge the narrative.
Temporal Transgressions… interpreting the narrative. The curator acts as an art mediator, creating temporal moments of playful and joyful assemblage.
The last weeks reading list, it is a good one!
Mx.D.P 
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