Sonic Realism / Wave #2 PLANETARY CONVERSATION September 2020

On Indigeneity, Curatorial Methodologies and Sound

Candice Hopkins & Pablo José Ramírez

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On Indigeneity, Curatorial Methodologies and Sound

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Candice Hopkins is an independent curator, writer and researcher. She is a citizen of Carcross/Tagish First Nation and lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her writing and curatorial practice explores the intersections of history, contemporary art and indigeneity.She works as senior curator for the 2019 and 2021 editions of the Toronto Biennial of Art and was a part of the curatorial team of the Canadian Pavilion of the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019, featuring the work of the media art collective Isuma. She is co-curator of notable exhibitions including Art for New Understanding: Native Voices 1950s to Now; the 2018 SITE Santa Fe biennial, Casa Tomada; documenta 14 in Athens, Greece and Kassel, Germany; Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art at the National Gallery of Canada and Close Encounters: The Next 500 Years in Winnipeg, MB. Her writing is published widely and recent essays and presentations include “The Gilded Gaze: Wealth and Economies on the Colonial Frontier,” for the documenta 14 Reader, “Outlawed Social Life” for South as a State of Mind and Sounding the Margins: A Choir of Minor Voices at Small Projects, Tromsø, Norway. She has lectured internationally including at the Witte de With, Tate Modern, Dak’Art Biennale, Artists Space, Tate Britain, Yale University, Cornell University, and the University of British Columbia.

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Pablo José Ramírez is a curator, art writer and cultural theorist who splits his time between Guatemala and London. He is the Adjunct Curator of First Nations and Indigenous Art at Tate Modern. His work revisits post-colonial societies to consider non-western ontologies, indigeneity, forms of racial occlusion and sound. He holds an MA in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths, University of London. In 2015 he co-curated with Cecilia Fajardo-Hill the 19th Bienal Paiz: Trans-visible. He was a Guest Curator at Parsons/The New School in New York and at the CCA in Glasgow. Ramirez was the recipient of the 2019 Independent Curators International/CPPC Award for Central America and the Caribbean. Among his recent exhibitions are: La Medida del Silencio, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, NuMu, Guatemala (2020); The Shores of the World: on communality and interlingual politics, Display, Prague (2018); Guatemala Después, co-curator, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, Parsons School of Design, New York (2015); This Might be a Place for Hummingbirds, co-curator, Center for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow (2014). Ramirez is the Editor in Chief and co-founder of Infrasonica.

The conversation between Candice Hopkins and Pablo José Ramírez investigates notions of sound and indigenous art, looking critically at the hierarchies regularly established between the sonic and the visual realm.
How to reconsider this relationship in indigenous cultural practices? How to look at it when developing curatorial and institutional discourses? What kind of methodologies can we learn from indigenous knowledge when thinking on the practice of curating?

The talk was co-presented with Independent Curators International (ICI) on August 19th, 2020.

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Independent Curators International (ICI) supports the work of curators to help create stronger art communities through experimentation, collaboration, and international engagement. Curators are arts community leaders and organizers who champion artistic practice; build essential infrastructures and institutions; and generate public engagement with art. Our collaborative programs connect curators across generations, and across social, political, and cultural borders. They form an international framework for sharing knowledge and resources — promoting cultural exchange, access to art, and public awareness for the curator’s role.

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