Introduction
Following months of uncertainty with a turbulent year starting off with Covid-19, increasing visibility of racism beyond the USA, climate change, the continuing conflict in the Middle East, global economic imbalances and more, I finally decided to open up an account at Medium. At a time where people are glued to their laptops and smart phones more than ever, with a constant bombardment of both factual and unfortunately abounding false information I wanted to treat this platform as an experimental writing space. As a curator with a practice of over seven years and a founding director of an itinerant organisation — Open Space — supporting emerging creative practice, and promoting dialogue, I will be writing about the current socio-political issues around contemporary art and beyond. Having made the tough decision to put Open Space on hold due to lack of funding opportunities, ambiguity and the domino effect of redundancies in the arts sector, I realised it is important more than ever to amplify diverse, creative voices whilst highlighting critical discourse.
In early August I initiated a platform called 10 Minute Interviews to feature the multidisciplinary practice of a diverse range of art professionals through short and succinct Q&As on Open Space’s digital platform and social media. In the early days of lockdown back in March, I was filled with anxiety and frustration of the overwhelming amount of Zoom webinars, Instagram lives, online exhibitions and mail outs. Whilst some of them were actually very timely and inspirational, some were just never-ending confabulations that lacked real content. With the Black Lives Matter movement, starting in the US and expanding globally and with many struggles’ creatives are facing, I wanted to invite artists I generally found interesting and inspiring to this platform to not only highlight their practice but also emphasise their different viewpoints around prevailing global and local affairs. I hope you enjoy my articles as they unravel.
