independent curator

Cairo Clarke is a contemporary art curator and writer focused on embodied decolonial practices. Her work is informed by slowness,  centering forms of knowledge production and dissemination that slip between the cracks, are formed on unstable ground and take on multiple temporalities. Her approach supports strands of theorising taking place in autonomous spaces and holding space for the mess.

Cairo has worked closely with artists to develop and share instances of work across film, performance, printed matter and exhibition on international levels. She has extensive experience across community outreach, youth education, and mentoring. 

Cairo was the 2020/21 Curatorial Fellow at LUX curating a year of programming and editing the book this broken piece of yard published in 2022. She was a research associate for iniva’s Archipelagos in Reverse Research Network, In 2019 she launched SITE, a publication and curatorial project exploring alternative encounters with artist practice and the dissemination of research.

@site.projects

For curatorial enquiries email here.

projects

Guest Curator, Bogiaisso - video art film festival  - Aug 2024

Suzannah Pettigrew, A Sphinx Looking for a Poet - 3537.org Paris (July 5-9th 2023)

Ancestral Futures - The Curated App

Guest Curator for Residency 11:11 The Screening Room March 2023 screening Hiba Ismail’s An Ostentatious Paperweight That May Or May Not Be The Real Thing, 2021 

Metabolic Time / am meitibileach - Project Arts Centre, Dublin (Feb - Apr 2022)

Migration & Movement - From River to River, Nero Editions, European Pavilion Nov 2022

this broken piece of yard - year long curatorial programme at LUX 2020/2022

Itinerant Imaginaries Archival Disorientation Screening Programme, Regent Street Cinema 2021

By Any Means, screening programme in collaboration with Gray Wielebinski VO Curations 2021

in the absence of ruins, Pompeii Commitment, Archeological Matters 2020

SITE, Mimosa House, 2019

Fragility Spills, ASC Gallery 2018

The Reinvention of Love, Century Club, 2018

Act 1, Part II, Guest Projects, Art Nights 2017

Touch Sensitive, Guest Projects Residency, 2017

talks/panels/interviews

In conversation with Hiba Ismail, Residency 11:11 Screening Room 2023

H.A.W.T. Origin’s Eile online programme for Dublin Fringe Festival 2022

How do we keep the channels open with all this salt? iniva, 2022

In conversation with Jess Wan, Shades of Noir 2022

In conversation with Residency 11:11 2022

Dreaming Rivers, Weaving Collectives in conversation with Judah Attille & han heung media collective. Block Museum of Art with the Women’s Center at Northwestern University 2021

Recipes for Resistance, Healing Justice LDN. 2021

Performing Acculturation 2021

Listening with our whole bodies, Deptford X online, 2020

In conversation with Shenece Oretha, Montez Press Radio 2020

Realistic Distance: Rules and Resistance, Printing Plant, Looiersgracht 60, Amsterdam 2019

Who’s Taking Care of the Artists? Fabrica Brighton 2019

Dark Air Public Programme Seager Gallery 2019

The Successful Artist? Creative Exchange, Royal Academy of Arts 2018

The Bluestocking Legacy: A Conversation, Hatchlands Park 2018

Women in Arts Leadership, Goldsmiths University 2018

Empower Her Voice: Mothers in the Arts RCA White City, 2018

Curating Radical Futures, Tate Modern 2017

Reinventing the Wheel, Phoenix Magazine 2017

Reviving Female Perspectives: Touch Sensitive, After Nyne Magazine 2017

In Conversation with Lotte Andersen, Century Club 2017

In Conversation with Clare Price, Jaqueline Utley , Studio 1.1 2017

The Future of Curation - Women in Art Symposium, Tate Exchange 2017

Shezine: Navigating the Art World, The Society Club 2016