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Curating

Lucy Cotter holds a PhD in cultural analysis, engaging with the agency of curating in a post/colonial world. In her writing and curatorial projects, she approaches the exhibition space as a unique site for embodied-material-spatial knowledge-making, multi-sensory access, and cultural decolonization.

Her curatorial accolades include being the curator of the Dutch Pavilion, 57th Venice Biennale 2017, with Cinema Olanda: Wendelien Van Oldenborgh, a solo exhibition in Venice comprising of an architectonic installation with new film works, engaging with tensions between the national image and suppressed histories. Cinema Olanda: Platform, a major group exhibition and event program at Kunstinstitut Melly, the Stedelijk Museum, and EYE Film Museum which brought these questions home to the Netherlands.

Cotter was Curator in Residence at Oregon Contemporary, Portland, OR from 2021–22, curating the year-long program Turnstones (2022-3). Other recent presentations include Undoing Langauge: Early Performance by Brian O' Doherty at The Kitchen, New York (2021), and The Unknown Artist (2019) at the Center for Contemporary Art and Culture, Portland. She is currently curating the year-long program Artistic Research in a World on Fire (2024–5) as project resident at Stelo Arts and Culture Foundation, Portland, with additional events at venues across the US, including e-flux, New York; The Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, and Rivers Institute for Contemporary Art and Thought, New Orleans.

Her earlier projects include being co-curator of Here as the Centre of the World, 2006–2008, a transnational artistic research project in six cities worldwide that explored possibilities for a more culturally responsive art discourse. She organized numerous exhibitions engaging with artistic research as head of the MA Artistic Research, Royal Academy of Art, The Hague from 2010-2015. Cotter has worked in various capacities at museums and galleries in Germany (Ludwigs Forum for Contemporary Art) and Italy (Peggy Guggenheim Museum and Nuova Icona Institute) and from 2003-4 was co-director of Public Space With A Roof, Amsterdam.

Curatorial, Selected

  • Artistic Research in a World on Fire

    Stelo Arts and Culture Foundation, Portland; e-flux, New York; Et. al, San Francisco; Rivers Institute for Contemporary Art & Thought, New Orleans, The Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, et al.

    2024–2025
    2024
  • Future Memories of This Land: The Confluence Project, Indigenous Counter-Narratives, and Maya Lin’s Counter-Monuments

    Eric and Rhona Hoffman Gallery,

    Lewis & Clark College, Portland, OR

    2022
  • a performance of keyon gaskin

    Oregon Center for Contemporary Art, Portland, OR

    4 September 2021
    2021
  • Unquiet Objects

    Oregon Center for Contemporary Art, Portland, OR

    12 March – 2 May 2021
    2021
  • Proximities, a rehearsal, an archive: Katarina Zdjelar

    Oregon Center for Contemporary Art, Portland, OR

    29 October 2021 – 2 January 2022
    2021
  • Undoing Language: Early Performance Works by Brian O’ Doherty

    The Kitchen, New York

    October 8, 2021
    2021
  • Timelines for the Future: Christine Howard Sandoval

    Oregon Center for Contemporary Art, Portland, OR

    8 January – 21 February 2021
    2021
  • The Unknown Artist

    Center for Contemporary Art and Culture, Portland, OR

    5 March – 18 April 2020
    2020
  • Mercurial States

    Classroom, Art and Education, e-flux

    August 2019
    2019
  • Cinema Olanda Platform

    Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam

    17 June – 20 August 2017
    2017
  • Cinema Olanda: Wendelien Van Oldenborgh

    An installation by Wendelien van Oldenborgh for the Dutch Pavilion | Giardini

    57th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia

    13 May – 26 November 2017
    2017
  • Cinema Olanda: Event Series

    Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; EYE Film Museum; University of Amsterdam, The Black Archives, Amsterdam Public Library

    7 February 2016 – 26 November 2017
    2016
  • Artistic Research/MAR exhibitions 2010–2015

    The Royal Academy of Art, The Hague; De Appel, Amsterdam; 1646, The Hague; BAK, Utrecht; Walden Affairs, The Hague; Kunstvlaai, Amsterdam; Villa K, The Hague; Studio Loos, The Hague; Stroom, The Hague; W139, Amsterdam; Walden Affairs, The Hague, A-Pass, Brussels; The Royal College of Art, London

    2010–2015
    2010
  • Here as the Centre of the World

    Dutch Art Institute; NIASD, Damascus; Diyarbakir Arts Center, Turkey; Anadolu Kultur, Istanbul; Zico House, Beirut, Rashid Diab Art Center, Khartoum, Taipei National University

    2007–2010
    2007
  • Public Space With A Roof

    Overtoom 301, Amsterdam

    2003–4
    2003

SAMPLE CATALOGUES

  • Turnstones (catalogue)

    Portland: Oregon Center for Contemporary Art

    2022
  • Cinema Olanda: Wendelien Van Oldenborgh (catalogue/reader)

    Berlin Hatje Cantz / Dutch Pavilion, 57th Venice Biennale

    2017
  • Here as the Centre of the World (catalogue/reader)

    Rotterdam: Archis

    2010

How close is curatorial practice to the affinities and sensibilities of artists? Does curating seek to hold knowledge differently; does it work from art’s embodied material-conceptual processes? Does it swim in the direction of the unknown? Is it committed to fluidity, to play, and to serious reimagining? What are the continuities and discontinuities between artistic practice, academic inquiry, and curatorial practice? Does it embrace the exhibition’s potential to hold space for (neurodiverse, anti-ableist, anti-racist, gender-exploratory) forms of intelligence?