Lisa Slominski
Curator, writer, and cultural producer (UK, US)
Lisa Slominski is an American curator, writer, and cultural producer based in East London. She advocates for neurodiversity in the current contemporary art discourse and actively examines the historical framework of underrepresented artists often considered 'self-taught' or 'outsiders'. Academically she lectures on the effects of artists assigned as 'Outsiders' including for Queen Mary University of London and forthcoming for Christie's Education. Recent articles include "Ron's Place: The Theatre or (personal) Power" in the peer-reviewed journal for Cambridge University Press and "Season One: for an inclusive and accessible contemporary art world" for Art UK. In 2020, she co-founded the inclusive international curatorial platform Art et al. which focuses on international commissions and collaboration between arts professionals with and without disability. Previously, she curated public art commissions on Chicago's mass-transit system with the city's Department of Cultural Affairs, and for Tenderpixel, London. Her book, Nonconformers: A New History of Self-Taught Artists was published by Yale University Press in 2022 and presents an international history of artists often identified as 'self-taught' advocating for a nuanced understanding of modern and contemporary art often challenged by the establishment.---
[...] We could start with why you became a curator. Are you interested in a specific topic, if so why, and if you have developed any tactics to reflect on and act upon the issue of tokenization?
I am a curator, but I also define myself as a cultural producer, or sometimes a cultural/curatorial worker, because I am really interested in simply engaging with the work and with artists as opposed to simply putting on shows. I work a lot with living contemporary artists who identify with having an intellectual, developmental or learning disability, and through the book 'Nonconformers' and the Museum of Everything, a growing interest of mine is this history of artists that were/are considered marginalised. When I curate, or put shows together, it can be difficult to balance how to present the concepts and artists I work with. I would never want the concept to be that 'this is a disabled art show'. I am more interested in the notion of curating an exhibiton, for example, with artists who identify as disabled and artists who are working on their PhD, for example or maybe self taught. Where and how identity and biography can lend a deeper reading of the work in an exhibition, but not validating the practice?
Educational philosopher Maxine Greene mainly talks a lot about race, but also about this notion of difference ad visibility, as opposed to hiding it: there's nothing wrong with being disabled, being a person of color, queer. There's nothing wrong with being eccentric, etc either. There is a lack of intellectually disabled voices in contemporary art, so when they are exhibited, I do actually want to mention if they identify as intellectually disabled, or autistic or schizophrenic. Not that I want that to be what's validating their practice, but if that's part of their core identity I think it's quite important to mention it. But then it's tricky, it could feel like a token: back to 'we're doing a disabled art show'. Sometimes it can be done in really, really interesting, culturally historical significant ways, but not always. It ticks a lot of boxes and it's very visible, but can go wrong. It's a constant thing I'm aware of and I think mixing up artistic practices and then being really respectful of how you discuss their identity is an essential, ethical curatorial tactic, and even the way of doing this is changing a lot right now.
For example, Judith Scott was a contemporary artist, with down syndrome. She was also predominantly nonverbal, and she was also deaf. She made work at Creative Growth, one of the studios I have collaborated with in California. She's been shown at the Venice Biennale, had a retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum. Her biography has always been interesting to me to read when positioned in different contexts: I preferred it when it focused on her practice but should the fact that she was born deaf with Down syndrome and institutionalised for 30 years of her life be mentioned? I think it could add complexity to the way one can read in the work.
And back to tokenism more specifically- I was listening to a lecture a few years ago hosted by Studio Voltaire, and someone raised the question about collections wanting to start filling a void of disabled artists in their programmes. Do you resist because it's tokenism? Someone on the panel at the time said it is a starting point, and it is a token, but it's with acknowledgement that it could potentially lead acquisitions and exhibitions to go in different directions. Personally I tend to think the token point seems to be potentially a first point of change in the right direction, maybe it's the first step of awareness, also curatorially speaking.
It could also be a one off situation, when a box can be ticked and then it never needs to be revisited again. Or something I see happening specifically with the organisations supporting disabled artists is that they're kind of shoved into educational programming rather than exhibitions.
Have you ever been in a situation where you thought that you were tokenising a group and what did you do?
As mentioned above, the biography or presentation of the artists and the work is crucial. It's essential to listen to the artist and understand how they want to be presented and how they want their practice to be discussed. I am not suggesting that a biography or descriptive text should say exactly how a work should look in an absolute sense; you need to allow for a few points to be more open ended, educational of course but in a less didactic way. It's important to spend time with the community or you are working with and the one you hope to create around a work or a show, and define things together. I am invested in finding new voices and connecting with artistic communities and getting to know them. I think it's also about curatorial practice and the ethics of it; funding in this context is an important point. To write an application for a big grant, we obviously need to have solid programming in place. We try to work with artists with and without disabilities when we build programmes. And when we make grants, we have to consider both qualities. The use of language can be really problematic, for example there's always a limit on the number of words and it takes away a lot of the sense of direction or nuances about the identity and practice of the artists we work with. A crucial point for us that we have to stress when writing a grant application is that we are providing funded work for disabled artists to get funding; and that becomes very key in certain applications, not just the programme. And also going back to curatorial strategies, for me it's about being an ally. As a curator or cultural professional working with institutions of course we also always need to situate ourselves in relation to the contexts, the stakeholders, the artists, the audiences. And then of course we are always trying to get better artist fees out of the budget. It's essential to ask for time to work properly and to kindly relate to each other, and better working conditions.
I think the point of agency is really important. Certainly, like in the book, it's essential to understand (as someone who doesn't identify as disabled) what artists that may identify with disability or being neurodivergent might want to activate with their feature. In general I'm constantly working for artists not to be pinned as 'outsider' artists or 'self-taught' first, before everything else about them. Thankfully I feel this is changing and changing fast, which is great.