New perspectives on global art histories

Integrated within Tate Modern’s Curatorial team, the Centre’s core team work with the wider Curatorial team to lead or contribute to exhibitions, collection displays, acquisitions and public events. The Centre’s core team also work closely with the Learning & Research and Digital departments as well as other colleagues at Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives, to connect Tate with a wide network of peers and academic partners.

The Centre is led by Dr Sook-Kyung Lee, Senior Curator, International Art (Hyundai Tate Research Centre: Transnational). Lee has had responsibilities for the research and acquisition of art from the Asia-Pacific region for the Tate collection and previously headed Tate Research Centre: Asia (2012–16). As Exhibitions & Displays Curator at Tate Liverpool she curated several exhibitions and collection displays such as Doug Aitken: The Source and Thresholds. Lee also served as the Commissioner & Curator of the Korean Pavilion for the 56th Venice Biennale. She recently curated Nam June Paik, which opened at Tate Modern in October 2019 and will tour in Europe, USA and Asia, co-organised by Tate Modern and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Curators Nabila Abdel Nabi and Sadia Shirazi are embedded in Tate Modern’s Curatorial team to carry out acquisition and programme related curatorial work, with a focus on the Centre’s aim of contributing to the development of the ‘transnational’ framework.

Nabila Abdel Nabi is an art historian and curator based in London. She is currently Curator, International Art at Tate. She was previously Associate Curator at The Power Plant, Toronto and prior to that she was Gallery Manager at The Third Line, Dubai. She has worked on solo exhibitions and facilitated new commissions by artists including Hajra Waheed, Vivian Suter, Omar Ba, Emeka Ogboh, Abbas Akhavan, Kapwani Kiwanga, Karla Black, Michael Landy, Kader Attia, Amalia Pica and Jonathas de Andrade, among others. She recently curated the exhibition Hold Everything Dear at The Power Plant, Toronto. She holds an MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art and a BA from the University of Chicago.

Sadia Shirazi is currently Curator, International Art at Tate. Her work focuses on transregional histories of modernism and contemporary art in South Asia. Recent curatorial and archival projects include the 02020 Counter-Archive for Performance Space New York, Soft and Wet (2019) at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Project Space, welcome to what we took from is the state (2016) at the Queens Museum, and 230MB/Exhibition Without Objects (2013) at Khoj International Artists’ Association. Shirazi has contributed to exhibition catalogues, collected volumes and publications including Artforum, art-agenda and Bidoun, and is a recipient of the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant (2021). Shirazi holds a MA from MIT and a PhD from Cornell University, held an ACLS Postdoctoral Fellowship in Transnational Asian Studies at Johns Hopkins University and is a Visiting Scholar in their Department of History.

The Centre’s activities are devised and managed by the Programme Manager and Assistant Curator, International Art, HTRC:T.

Steering Committee

The Centre is guided by Tate’s internal Steering Committee, which consists of Tate-wide directors and senior members of staff with expertise in Tate’s core activities including the collection, displays and exhibitions, research and national and international partnerships. The Steering Committee members input into and steer the Centre’s strategy and output and align our events with Tate’s programmes at all Tate sites: Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives.

Advisory Board

The Centre is also supported by an Advisory Board, which consists of external academics working in the field of transnational art history. The role of the Board is to advise and steer the Centre’s strategic direction and to help develop a wider network in academia and artistic communities across the world.

Chair

Sook Kyung Lee, Senior Curator, International Art

Members

Professor Oriana Baddeley (University of the Arts London)
Professor Monica Juneja (Heidelberg University)
Professor Christian Kravagna (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna)
Professor Chika Okeke-Agulu (Princeton University)
Professor Ming Tiampo (Carleton University)

OPPORTUNITIES TO GET INVOLVED

The Centre offers a variety of short-term posts that are designed specifically to offer developmental opportunities to researchers and curators from around the world. These are tiered to support people at all stages of their careers. Opportunities, open calls and grant applications will be listed here when they arise.

Follow @TateResearch on Twitter for all updates, news and opportunities.

VISITING FELLOWSHIP PROGRAMME

This programme provides academics and curators with the opportunity to develop their independent research that aligns with Tate’s research interests.

Updates will be posted here when new Fellows are in place.

These posts provide curators and researchers with the opportunity to remain within the region they are working in and carry out field research in relevant areas for Tate.

The current Hyundai Tate Research Centre: Transnational Adjunct Curators are Daniella Rose King, Portia Malatjie and Pablo José Ramirez.

Daniella Rose King is Adjunct Curator, Caribbean Diasporic Art

Daniella Rose King is a curator and writer concerned with artistic practices of the Caribbean and black diaspora with a particular emphasis on feminisms, the capitalocene and black geographic thought. Between 2017 and 2020 she was the Whitney-Lauder Curatorial Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania where she curated two interrelated exhibition and publication projects that addressed concerns at the intersection of black feminism, environmental racism and contemporary visual art practices: The Last Place They Thought Of (2018) and Deborah Anzinger: An Unlikely Birth (2019). Prior to this she was the 2015/16 Whitney Independent Study Program Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow. She has held institutional positions at Nottingham Contemporary, Iniva in London, Cornerhouse (now HOME) in Manchester and MASS Alexandria. She holds an MA in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art, London.

Portia Malatjie is Adjunct Curator, Africa and African Diaspora

Portia Malatjie’s research focuses on expressions of African conceptions of blackness – with an emphasis on the sonic and the temporal – in contemporary African artistic practice. At the core of her research is how African spiritual practices, fugitivity, spectrality, and technology are mobilised as modes of black refusal. Portia has curated work by Helen Sebidi, Dineo Seshee Bopape, Yinka Shonibare CBE and Kemang Wa Lehulere. She is working towards a co-curated extensive research and exhibition project that instrumentalises black feminist theory to correct the exclusion of black South African women artists from a broader art history. Portia will soon be taking up a position as Lecturer in Art History and Discourse of Art at the University of Cape Town, where she will be based. She will work closely with the curatorial team at Tate Modern, including Osei Bonsu, Curator, International Art, and with the Africa Acquisitions Committee. Portia has an MA and BA from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and is completing her PhD in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Hyundai Tate Research Centre: Transnational
Tate Modern
Bankside
London SE1 9TG
+44 (0)20 7401 5038

htrc.transnational@tate.org.uk