Curatorial Residency

This residency is aimed at graduate, recent graduate students or emerging scholars interested in curatorial practices and museum studies, who seek to enhance their skills through active participation with MAMBO’s Curatorial Department, with a focus on digital practices. The selected resident will gain practical experience in the conceptualization, planning, and research for the third cycle of MAMBO’s exhibition programming, collaborate in the development of projects related to the exhibition cycle, and receive mentorship from the curators and members at the museum.

Upon completing the residency, the candidate will acquire hands-on tools and experience that are essential for a successful career in curatorial work. They will gain insights into the operational aspects of museum exhibitions, including curatorial decision-making, project management, and the integration of digital technologies in research and exhibition practices

The winner of the first edition of the Curatorial Residency is Federico Reyes.

Federico Reyes (Colombia) is an artist, editorial designer, and he holds a master’s degree in Cultural Studies. He has worked as an advisor on research-creation processes for the 46th National Salon of Artists, the Women, Arts, and Care Program, and various music programs at the Ministry of Cultures, Arts, and Knowledge in Colombia. He has also been a production assistant and designer for Espacio Odeón, a production and programming assistant for Fundación Ambulante Colombia, and an editorial design consultant for the IOM.

His interest in the poetic dimensions of virtual relationality and internet culture has allowed him to explore, through his artistic practice, diverse media such as textual art, expanded graphics, digital and analog printing, poetic computation, digital craft, net art, and electronic art. He has participated in group exhibitions in Bogotá, Buenos Aires, Miami, and New York.

About Federico’s Participation

“Far from reaffirming a stable and institutionalized definition of curatorial practice, this residency, where I will have the opportunity to closely and actively engage with the work of the MAMBO’s Curatorial Department, offers the possibility of continuing my search for alternative means that have shaped my creative practices and interests to date.

I hope this opportunity will allow me to uncover pathways that lead to thinking about broader, more diverse, and plural curatorial practices, distanced from the more traditional and hegemonic manifestations of curatorial work, which have historically proven to be structurally exclusionary and reductive. I believe it will be a challenge to use the digital realm as a framework for systematization and circulation, because digital media are ambiguous and porous, and although they may seem to hold infinite connective potential, they are also decisive within various contemporary systems of exclusion.”

Acknowledgments

This project is supported by Digital Futures in Museum Practices, a research initiative led by Susana Vargas-Mejía and funded by the Government of Canada’s New Frontiers in Research Fund [Anita Sinner PI, Cristian Zaelzer Co-PI, Susana Vargas-Mejía Co-I, Trish Osler and Samia ElSheikh, NFRF-2022-00245].