Cairo Clarke
Independent Curator (UK, IT)
Cairo Clarke is a curator and writer whose work is informed by slowness. It centers forms of knowledge production and dissemination that slip between the cracks, are formed on unstable ground and take on multiple temporalities; supporting strands of theorising taking place in autonomous spaces and holding space for the mess.Cairo has worked closely with artists to develop and share instances of work across film, performance, printed matter and exhibition. Cairo produced and edited the book project this broken piece of yard published by LUX in 2022. Other recent invitations include The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Project Arts Centre Dublin, Pompeii Commitment: Archeological Matters, Iniva's Archipelagos in Reverse Research Network, Jerwood Arts. Cairo was the 2020/21 Curatorial Fellow at LUX. In 2019 she launched SITE, a publication and curatorial project exploring alternative encounters with artist practice and the dissemination of research.
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Why did you become a curator, were you interested in a specific topic and why?
My path into curating was pretty untraditional, I didn't study art history, have prior connections to the art world or really even know what curating was until the end of my BA (2014) in digital media design when we were working on our final major project and our lecturer (who is also an artist) talked to us about "curating" in regards to how we will present and develop our projects. It was the first time I heard this word and it felt like a switch went off in my head. After nearly 4 years of a degree I really disliked it felt like this verb "curating" articulated the way I was already working with people on projects in my degree and how I wanted to continue. He mentioned the Curating and Collections course at Chelsea. I applied for my Masters (I didn't even really know how to look for other curating courses but I'm so glad I went there) I was awarded a scholarship for low income families and was accepted onto the course.
I can't say there is a reason I became a curator but the ways in which I was able to work and build projects, artworks, writing, dialogues in collaboration with others is what I set out to do. For me a curatorial space is and should be a space of collaboration and intentionality. The types of topics I was interested in were those of artists, collectives, curators, communities that were carving out space for conversations and imaginings of the world that were outside of the mainstream narratives of history, of being human and kin with the earth, putting forth languages that centre knowledges that are not institutional, national or colonial propaganda but are lived experiences that shape the world. These things felt important to me.
Maybe because the city I am from (London) was changing so rapidly around me, losing any sense of the human I felt like curating projects could be a tactile space for us all to gather and rework the types of spaces we need and want to exist within outside of commerce. I wanted to and still am finding ways that are open to the contradictions and stickiness of all of this.
Have you ever perceived the danger of false inclusion and tokenisation within the art system, where institutions should be at the forefront of inclusivity?
I have not only perceived but I have experienced this countless times in arts institutions and organisations big and small. To even answer this question is quite heavy because of the countless unresolved experiences, jobs I have walked out of, money I have not received, things about my person I have internalised. I think it's almost a redundant question because many of us who do not fit into the whitesupremacist, neocolonial structures of institutions have been abused by them. So I think anyone who says no either has not yet experienced it and sadly will, or are part of the very fabric of those institutions whether they realise it or not.
I do not believe these institutions can do anything but tokenize. I believe individuals inside them do often believe in taking a genuine approach, but the structures just will never allow it. In some way if we accept them for what they are, their false inclusivity etc we can have some kind of agency in how we want to interact with them or not, work with them or not. We do not need to uphold them, our labour and creativity has already done that for centuries, especially in the context of the UK (and northern europe in general) where museums and institutions are intrinsically linked to slavery, colonialism, conservative and right wing politics, capitalism etc..
During the BLM uprisings I got more invitations to work on projects than I ever had before, that was totally reactionary and felt like gaslighting. I felt like I and many of my peers were clearly being used to cover up these institutions' images. Manipulating their power because at a time of lockdowns and scarcity of work in general we also need to survive as many of us do not come from financially stable backgrounds. Saying no to work can often be harder than for those who are more financially secure. In that way there is a lot we bury inside of ourselves just to get through the experience.
Ultimately "inclusivity" as a concept benefits only the institution. Until the systems change, giving a few more shows to artists marginalised by race, sexuality, gender, ableism but not upping their fees, production budget, support is not enough. Bringing vulnerable people into a toxic system is not the answer.
Have you ever experienced tokenisation of identities/certain groups as a problem in your practice? Have you questioned that?
I've experienced many situations of tokenisation when working in arts organisations both as a freelancer for a particular project or employed. There was an instance when one organisation was presenting their 5 year plan which included a breakdown of how they will aim to exhibit one black artist in their yearly programme. It was tokenising because there was no nuance or actual interest in generally diversifying who they commissioned; it was a total tick box method. Myself and another staff member raised this - ultimately it led to us leaving a few months after.
There have been other situations where I have invited artists or cultural practitioners from my network to exhibit work or share their practice. My intention when working with bigger organisations is to always extend that space to practitioners who I think would benefit from the opportunity. However that has meant that I have had to be a buffer between a harmful institution and the artist. I think overtime I have become more cautious of inviting people into already toxic environments and questioning whether it is worth the damage that is quite often the outcome.
Did you develop any organisational or curatorial tactics to overcome this problem and really support the communities that were important to you and your programmes?
One example I can give was during my recent curatorial fellowship at LUX - which I have to say is the only arts organisation I have ever worked with where I didn't experience tokenisation or any violation of my persons, my curatorial practice and I felt grounded and comfortable with their approach in general as a space.
At the beginning of the fellowship though (which was in the middle of BLM uprisings, pandemic lockdowns and a very long and harmful employment tribunal I was going through) I was totally terrified to join an arts organisation and simultaneously in shock that I had been invited to be curatorial fellow after internalising so much from bad experiences.
It was really important to me to understand the organisations history and structure before I invited any other black, brown, queer people into the space. So I spent the first 6 months of the fellowship researching, reading about LUX's history, who were the types of artists in their collection, what was missing, who was most distributed, what was the dynamic between employees, how did I feel being there. Once I felt secure in this and I'm so glad I did I then invited people to collaborate with me during this time. I'm really glad I took that approach. It was slower and meant I pushed back on public facing projects for a while, but it was crucial to ensuring that when we did start developing work it was done so with the utmost care.
I also centred work that would benefit the artist and contributors as fully as possible. I put together a working group of 6 artists where we met every 6 weeks to watch films, eat, share resources etc. Within this was also total access to the LUX archive, opportunity to connect with other staff and a £1000 for each artist that came without any stipulation. I wanted the organisation to make a commitment to artists without them having to produce any work for them and LUX really happily agreed - mentoring is something fundamental to LUX so I'm glad we could do this. We also didn't publicise the group, there was no opportunity for the organisation to even benefit from proximity to these artists publicly. It was all just about building relationships together for each other and with the support of the organisation.
I'm really grateful for that space we built together, it was loose, light and we were able to give whatever type of energy and capacity we had. It was not monumental or a moment that we needed attention for it was just real praxis.
What might feminist and queer curating mean to you?
It is always in a process of becoming, it is intersectional, its listens, it has a forever shifting centre, it is intergenerational, it decentres whitesupremacy, non hierarchical, non linear, it goes beyond distinctions of the physical body, beyond the politics of identity perceived in language and used by institutions to categorise and demarcate. Instead its indistinguishability as "one thing" means it is ever morphing and shifting, resisting, growing, nourishing those that are part of its organism. Expanding its roots as networks of solidarity - as a doing word. As my dear friend, artist, curator, and visionary Ode puts it, we do this "so we can imagine other unruly notions of identity beyond what even defines it as "identity" in the first place".