Through my doctoral research, I approach curating as a reparative practice, developing a site-responsive yet translatable methodology for working within and against the conditions of cultural institutions. Informed by decolonial, psychoanalytic, social-reproduction and queer-affect theory, this methodology emerges from my lived experience of curatorial work across institutions during periods of crisis. It builds on recent discourses of institutional care while asking what curatorial practice might make possible amid the intersecting and persistent crises of the present.
Currently I am Senior Curator at La Trobe Art Institute, where I lead the artistic direction, develops residency programs and works with the University’s collections. I work also as Senior Research Associate on the ARC funded project Dialogues with Difficult Objects: Mediating Controversty in Museums.
Previously, I was Director of West Space, Naarm/Melbourne, and Curatorial Fellow at Performa, New York. I studied at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York, and I am completing a practice-led PhD at Monash University.
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Djaara, 2026