With a mission to present and discuss the work created today by visual artists and cultural makers from here and afar, join us for a talk with José Roca, Artistic Director of FLORA ars+natura in Bogotá, and Raphael Chikukwa, Chief Curator of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, who will speak on their respective programs and curatorial visions. This event is made possible on the occasion of the pairs visit to the Netherlands as part of the Mondriaan Fonds ‘International visitors program’.
Raphael Chikukwa
Born in Zimbabwe, Raphael Chikukwa worked as an independent curator for more than ten years before joining the National Gallery of Zimbabwe mid-2010 as its Chief Curator. He is the founding curator of the first Zimbabwe Pavilion in 2011, and also curated the Zimbabwe Pavilion 2013, 2015 and 2017 at the Venice Biennale. Chikukwa is a founding member of the PUMA funded Creative Africa Network as an editor and advisor of the project from 2008 – 2009. He is also the co-curator for the Basket Case exhibition in 2014 and co-curator of Kabbo Ka Muwala: Migration and Mobility in Contemporary Art, Zimbabwe, Uganda and Germany. The 2nd Johannesburg Biennale in 1997 provided an impetus to Raphael’s curatorial career after working as a volunteer guide for the Biennale. He later moved to his home country Zimbabwe as a process of relocation to his motherland. Recently he was among seven Curators from Africa attending the Tate Modern Symposium “Curating Africa” where he presented a paper on his curatorial practice. In 2008, Chikukwa represented Africa at the 2008 Art Basel Miami Conversations in the United States of America. The American Centre Foundation also awarded Raphael a curatorial research grant in 2006 – 2007 and he travelled in West Africa for his curatorial. His intention is to change the visual arts landscape of Zimbabwe.
José Roca
A Colombian curator working from Bogotá, José Roca is currently the Artistic Director of FLORA ars+natura, and curator of the LARA collection, Singapore. From 2012 to 2015 he was the Estrellita B. Brodsky Adjunct Curator of Latin American Art at Tate, London. He managed for a decade the arts program at the Banco de la República in Bogotá. Roca was a co-curator of the I Poly/graphic Triennial in San Juan, Puerto Rico (2004), the 27th Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil (2006) and the Encuentro de Medellín MDE07 (2007), and was the Artistic Director of Philagrafika 2010, Philadelphia’s international Triennial celebrating print in contemporary art. He served on the awards jury for the 52nd Venice Biennial (2007), and was the chief curator of the 8 Bienal do Mercosul in Porto Alegre, Brazil (2011). He is the author of Transpolitical: art in Colombia 1992-2012 (with Sylvia Suárez), and Waterweavers: A Chronicle of Rivers (with Alejandro Martín), published by the Bard Graduate Center in New York in conjunction with the exhibition Waterweavers: The River in Contemporary Colombian Visual and Material Culture (2014).