Independent Curators International (ICI) initiate their travelling conversation series with Independent curator and CCA,Lagos director Bisi Silva

Independent Curators International is on the move throughout the United States. ICI has organized a traveling conversation series with Nigerian curator Bisi Silva taking place next month in Illinois, New York, New Jersey, and Texas.

April 29–May 12, 2010

The Curator’s Perspective with Bisi Silva will be moderated by ICI’s executive director Kate Fowle at the New Museum on May 9, 4–6 pm.

Independent Curators International has developed its first touring curatorial conversation with Bisi Silva, the founder/director of the Center for Contemporary Art in Lagos, Nigeria. ICI’s program marks the first time that Silva will speak in the U.S., introducing diverse new audiences to her rich and vital practice. The conversation series will explore the growing impact of transnational practice, using Silva’s extensive curatorial experiences across Africa, Asia, and Europe as a starting point for discussion. Through the series, Silva will address the potential for new dynamic forms of exhibition-making and cultural exchange and present her research on artists, as well as respond to questions posed on the subjects of the expansion of curatorial networks and emerging collaborative institutional models around the world.

Throughout May 2010 Silva will participate in a series of public lectures, panel discussions, and conversations across the U.S. Hosting collaborators include Converge Curators Forum, NEXT Art Fair (Chicago, IL); MoCADA (Brooklyn, NY); Museum for African Art (New York, NY); Newark Museum (NJ); New Museum (New York, NY); and The Menil Collection (Houston, TX).

About Bisi Silva

Bisi Silva is an independent curator and the founder/director of the Center for Contemporary Art, Lagos (CCA, Lagos), which opened in December 2007. She was co-curator of the 2nd Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, Greece, Praxis: Art in Times of Uncertainty (September 2009), as well as Maputo: A tale of One City (February 2009). In 2008 she was co-selector with Portuguese curator Isabel Carlos for the international Artists’ Prize, Artes Mundi 3. In 2007 Silva co-curated Contact Zone: Contemporary Art from West and North Africa at the National Museum of Mali, as well asTelling… Contemporary Finnish photography at the 7th African photography biennale in Bamako. As director of CCA, Lagos, she has curated Fela, Ghariokwu Lemi and The Art of the Album Cover(2007); Ndidi Dike, Waka-into-bondage:The Last ¾ Mile (2008) and George Osodi, Paradise Lost: Revisiting the Niger Delta (2008) as well as ‘Like A Virgin...’, Lucy Azubuike (NIG) and Zanele Muholi (SA) (2009). In 2006 Silva co-curated the Dakar Biennale in Senegal.

Learn more about ICI's traveling conversation series with Bisi Silva here and other ICI programmes