Curatorial Work and the Decolonial
A talk by Chương-Đài Võ about international collaborations grounded in the local context.
This event takes place in the IIAS Conference room from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. (not online).
Everyone is welcome to attend. Please register, as seating is limited.
The Talk
Curator and researcher Chương-Đài Võ will discuss how curatorial work can be informed by decolonial thinking that centres collaboration, the consciousness of social issues, and consideration of place and history. Her curatorial projects are developed through conversations with artists and in response to the specificity of the project’s location. Võ will discuss three such projects: Far from Indochine, We Travel in Our Minds, and On the Streets. Each project was in conversation with a site not conventionally associated with contemporary art—a former Universalist church built in 19th-century Massachusetts, a Chinese restaurant in the financial centre of Hong Kong, and a café in a gentrified neighbourhood of Phnom Penh. The projects explore the migration and transformation of ideas and aesthetic practices, the role of storytelling and performance in fantastical imagination, and the artistic as an intuitive means of apprehending the world.
The Speaker
Chương-Đài Võ is a curator and writer based in Paris. She is interested in the migration and transformation of ideas and practices, affinities across the Global South, and the relationship between art history and contemporary art.
She is working as co-editor with Charles Esche on a forthcoming book about the Van Abbemuseum's collection and programming over the last 20 years—a case study on how a West European museum has engaged with demodernizing.
Võ’s curatorial projects include an exhibition at Asian Art Museum, San Francisco (2025); contribution to Asia Art Archive's participation in documenta 15; and Ho Tzu Nyen's The Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia, Vol. 1: G for Ghost(writers).
Her essays have been published by Afterall, Albertinum Museum, Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej w Warszawie, Institut national d’histoire de l’art (INHA), Moderna galerija, and Taipei Fine Arts Museum. She has a PhD from University of California, San Diego, and has been a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT, Fulbright Scholar, Chercheuse Invitée at INHA, and Lauréate de la Cité internationale des arts.
Registration (required)
Everyone is welcome to attend. Please register using the web form on this page, as seating is limited.
Installation view of Far from Indochine (2014), curated by Chương-Đài Võ and with artworks by Patty Chang and David Kelley, Dewey Ambrosino, and Frédéric Dialynas Sanchez. Photo by Will Howcroft and courtesy of New Art Center, Newton, Massachusetts.