Participants

Sutapa Biswas

Sutapa Biswas is an internationally renowned artist who works across a range of disciplines including painting, drawing, film, video, and photography. Born in India and educated in the UK, drawing from her training in art history as well as from literary sources, her works possess a stark but poetic resonance. Shaped by her interest in the human condition, and how larger historical narratives from across the globe collide with the often-undocumented personal stories, her practice questions the complexities of racial and gendered relations born out of tangled colonial histories. Like thread unravelling and ravelling in fabric, Biswas’s work weaves conceptually across time and space. 

In 2021-2022, Biswas held major UK solo exhibitions at Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge, the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead and Autograph, London. Other venues hosting Biswas’s works include Tate Modern and Tate Britain, Yale Center for British Art (Yale University), British Museum, 6th Havana Biennial, Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), and the Neuberger Museum (New York). She was a central figure within the 1980s Black British Art Movement. She is a Fellow of the Yale University (2019-2020) and recipient of the Art Fund UK Award 2019 for her film Lumen (2021) produced by Film and Video Umbrella, London, and Bristol Museums, UK. Her works are held in public collection including TATE, Government Art Collection (UK), Cartwright Hall Gallery, Bradford Museums, Graves Gallery Sheffield Museums, and Arts Council England. Biswas has taught Fine Art and Art History at undergraduate and postgraduate level for over 35 years. She lives and works in London.

Sophia Hinton-Lever

Sophia Hinton-Lever is a doctoral researcher, curator, writer and producer. Her doctoral research investigates the complex relationship between female artists and the contemporary art industry. It utilises organisation theory, post structural feminist philosophies, and cultural studies theories to approach questions of creative labour, embodiment and fetishisation. It explores questions of whether the management processes of the contemporary art industry, specifically galleries, objectify the corporeality of female artists and their work. Her research is heavily influenced by her creative academic background, she holds a BA English Literature from Goldsmiths and MA Global Creative and Cultural Industries from SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies). She is a Graduate Teaching Fellow at the University of Liverpool.

Alongside her research, Sophia is a creative producer and has produced large scale projects for major organisations including Culture Liverpool, Somerset House Trust and Almeida Theatre. In 2019, Sophia produced Naiza Khan’s participation in the 58th Venice Biennial, ‘Manora Field Notes’. Within all her projects, she holds a specific interest in opening access to the art sector for marginalised groups through sustained community engagement. Currently Sophia is the Associate Producer at UP Projects, within this role she is leading on a major socially engaged public realm art commission due to be installed in February 2024. Sophia also has an active creative writing practice. Her short story, ‘The Pleasure of Living’, was long listed for the Brick Lane Short Story competition 2021. She is currently working on her debut novel of the same name. Originally from Liverpool, Sophia now lives and works in London.

Linsey Young

Linsey Young is currently Curator of Contemporary British Art at Tate Britain where she works across the contemporary programme. Recent projects include Women in Revolt! Art and Activism 1970 – 1990, Turner Prize 2018 and Anthea Hamilton: The Squash, 2018. In 2019 Young Curated Charlotte Prodger’s Scotland and Venice presentation with Cove Park.

Svetlana Sequeira Costa

Svetlana Sequeira Costa is the founding director of Arts Cabinet, a research-led arts organisation based in London and working globally.  Svetlana is a curator, researcher, and organiser with experience of working internationally in the arts and culture, with private foundations, public institutions, artists and high net worth individuals. Svetlana’s current work focuses on setting up collaborations between artists and researchers, to produce innovative work that broadens people’s imagination and understanding of complex issues. Involving Higher Education institutions in the UK, Australia, Europe, and the US, with established Western artists and artists from Global South often from difficult territories such as Iran, North Africa and Latin America, the outcomes of these projects are disseminated through publications, events and learning labs.  Svetlana is also a Research Fellow at the War Studies Department at King’s College London, Research Associate at the University of Agder (Norway) Fine Art Department, and undertaking a PhD at the Slade/UCL.

Dr Nuria Querol

Dr Nuria Querol is Director of Critical Studies in the Art Department at Goldsmiths. Their research consists of several interconnected strands linked to contemporary art, curatorial studies, and theories of transculturality, decoloniality and globalisation, with a focus on Asia (China and India primarily).Nuria has published in numerous journals and in specialised publications such as the Journal of Curatorial Studies, Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Dialogues on Curating and UNESCO’s World Report on Cultural Diversity (2008). They serve on the editorial board for the Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, where they recently edited a special issue on Transcultural Curation and the Post-COVID World (2022).Their forthcoming monograph Transcultural Curating. Contemporary Indian Art in a Global Context (Liverpool University Press, 2024) addresses how transcultural exhibitions position Indian contemporary art globally.