Workshop | Curating As Whirlpool, Aurora or Matrix?

This curatorial workshop held at Nairang Art Gallery brought together participants from Lahore, Islamabad and Multan through a nomination process. The participants were diverse, ranging from artists and young curators to educators and writers.

Natasha Ginwala, curator of Public Programs for My East is Your West, conducted the workshop. The session began with Natasha discussing her own curatorial practices and looking at multiple approaches to curating. The participants then discussed their own curatorial ideas and strategies, allowing for discussion and feedback.

The workshop’s goal was to expose diverse participants in Pakistan to new curatorial strategies, allowing for capacity building, in a rapidly developing art country.

Natasha Ginwala is a curator, writer and editor based in Berlin and Colombo. Ginwala is Associate Curator at Gropius Bau, Berlin; Artistic Director of Colomboscope in Sri Lanka and the 13th Gwangju Biennale with Defne Ayas (2021). Ginwala has curated Contour Biennale 8, Polyphonic Worlds: Justice as Medium and was part of the curatorial team of documenta 14, 2017. Other recent projects include Colomboscope Festival (2019); Arrival, Incision. Indian Modernism as Peripatetic Itinerary in the framework of “Hello World. Revising a Collection” at Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, 2018; Riots: Slow Cancellation of the Future at ifa Gallery Berlin and Stuttgart, 2018; My East is Your West at the 56th Venice Biennale, 2015; and Corruption: Everybody Knows with e-flux, New York, 2015. Ginwala was a member of the artistic team for the 8th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, 2014, and has co-curated The Museum of Rhythm, at Taipei Biennial 2012 and at Muzeum Sztuki, Lodz, 2016–17. She was part of the curatorial teams of documenta 14 (2017) and the 8th Berlin Biennale (2014). Ginwala writes regularly on contemporary art and visual culture. Recent co-edited volumes include Stronger than Bone (Archive Books and Gwangju Biennale Foundation) and Nights of the Dispossessed: Riots Unbound (Columbia University Press).

A workshop by Natasha Ginwala