Visiting Curator Lecture • Sofía Olascoaga
Wed, Nov 4 • 7:00 - 8:00PM ET
Sofía Olascoaga (b. Mexico City, 1980) is a dedicated artist, curator, educator, and researcher focusing on the intersections of art and education. Experienced in methodologies for collective research, critical thinking and experimental formats for public programming, fostering encounters to explore collective memory, learning and action. Sofía’s artistic research practice focuses on learning and practicing on the histories and current possibilities of critical pedagogies, alternative education, communal life, collective organization, art and food cultures.
Proficient in developing editorial, research and curatorial platforms for the dissemination of artistic experiences. Olascoaga’s vast international experience working with institutional platforms in the arts and its expanded cultural fields, engages multi- perspective collaborations. Regular contributors include cultural workers, artists, activists, de-professionalized practitioners, theorists, curators and educators, with a wide range of institutional and independent interlocutors.
Over the past decades, her main projects include:
Between Utopia and Disenchantment (Entre utopía y desencanto), started in 2010 focuses on the collective memory and genealogies stemming from intentional community models developed in Mexico in past decades, addressing the ideas posed by Ivan Illich at the Centro Intercultural de Documentación (CIDOC), and its influential role in the practice of many Mexican and international thinkers and various self-organised initiatives.
The Nurturer: Cooking to Learn (La Nutridora: Una cocina para aprender), which conceives the kitchen and the act of cooking, as an investigative site for individual and shared learning. Awarded the grantee in Experimental Practices (2019-2022) member of Sistema Nacional de Creadores Artísticos in Mexico.
Rehearsals for Mutual Sustenance, deepens the approach on art and food cultures, through the practice of collective cooking and experimental gatherings as an inquiry on collective memory, embodied forms of knowledge, land pedagogies, rehearsals for survival and the celebration of community as an ongoing living practice.
Recent public participations with collective cooking and research include: Bukhara Biennial, Curatorial School Faculty; KAUKA, 47 Salón Nacional de Artistas, Popayán, Colombia; Fire Station Doha, Arts Intensive Study Program, International Faculty; Rijksakademie, visiting lecturer; Brigada Nacional de Búsqueda de Desaparecidos, México; KLA ART, 32 EAST, Uganda; Bauhaus Dessau Centennial, School Fundamental; MASS Alexandria, Visiting Lecturer; Restauro, curatorial commission to artist Jorge Menna Barreto for the 32 nd Sao Paulo Biennial; Guest Lecturer, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires; Alter Academia Teoretica, Costa Rica; Lugar a Dudas- Escuela Incierta; Itaú Cultural, Sao Paulo; Trienal FRESTAS, SESC Sorocaba; Intervalo Escola – Amazonia, Brasil; Casa do Povo, Sao Paulo; Aura, Guatemala; Cittadellarte, Biella, Italia.
Olascoaga was Deputy Director for Programs at Ambulante, and the convener of Viaje como experiencia de aprendizaje at Colección CIAC. Co-curator of the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo Incerteza Viva (2016); Academic Curator at MUAC (Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo – UNAM) in Mexico City, 2014–15, where she coordinated Campus Expandido, an academic program of critical theory taking place at the museum.
In 2012, she was a Workshop Clinics Director for SITAC X, the International Symposium of Contemporary Art Theory in Mexico City. From 2007 to 2010, she was Head of Education and Public Programs at Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil in Mexico City. Sofía, was the first Research Curatorial Fellow at Independent Curators International (2011), and Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow at the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program (2010) both in New York City. She received her BFA with honors from La Esmeralda National School of Fine Arts (Mexico City). Recently, she received the International Diploma of Narrative Practices, by Colectivo de Prácticas Narrativas, based in Mexico City.
Sofia, is an active member of the international art networks Food Art Research Network, and Another Roadmap for Arts Education. A frequent collaborator of Red de Conceptualismos del Sur, and guest interlocutor of L’Internationale European Arts Museum Confederation, and the network Arts Collaboratory at the Assembly (Costa Rica, 2017), Casco General Assembly (Utrecht, 2018), and (Un)Translatable, in 2022. She has been advisor and researcher for Pro Helvetia’s COINCIDENCIA South American Arts Programme.
