How it started

In May 2020, at the end of the first Covid lock-down, several art professionals (artists, curators, authors, and others) joined their forces to open curatorial hotline. This solidarity initiative was intended to allow other emerging or professional art workers to maintain contact, while most of the cultural spaces were closed or operated only partially. We published our availabilities online and proposed 45 minutes video calls to everyone who felt the need to share their ideas, exchange about work experiences, or simply talk. In the last years, the team of curatorial hotline, which included contributors from Berlin, Copenhagen, Doha, Florida, Johannesburg, Lisbon, Paris, and Vienna, has allowed more than 600 art workers to begin or to continue dialoguing and discussing their practice, their research, and the different forms of professionalization, or simply to converse during the periods of isolation.

What now

At the present moment, curatorial hotline is reactivated only when we feel that there is a strong demand for our knowledge and attention. The last reactivation dates back to April 2022, when in the context of a devastating full scale war in Ukraine, we addressed our efforts, knowledge, and attention to the exiled artworkers, who needed to adapt to a new environment, rebuild networks, or share their stories.

About us

To curatorial hotline have contributed so far: Alice Bonnot, Alexandra Goullier Lhomme, Stina Gustafsson, Tadeo Kohan, Daria Kravchuk, Flounder Lee, Brooklyn J. Pakathi, Sasha Pevak, Julien Ribeiro, Emma Rssx, Luise Willer, and Andrei Zavadski.

Berlin (Germany)

Luise Willer

I am a researcher and curator based in Berlin. I studied global art history and museology at the University of Heidelberg and the Ecole du Louvre Paris, my research focuses on critical museum studies and
transcultural perspectives on global art histories.In the past I worked as curatorial assistant at the Centre Pompidou and for the Kunsthalle Hamburg. Besides research I’m freelancing in various contexts in Germany and France at the moment. I’m also organizing an exhibition series in Berlin on female* knowledge practices and visions of the world.Languages: German, English, French, Spanish

Andrei Zavadski

I am a Berlin-based researcher, writer, and editor. My work is situated at intersections of memory studies, public history, museum studies, and media studies. Currently, I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage (CARMAH), Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.I could offer advice on academic work in the context of Germany, including questions of applying for PhDs and postdoctoral positions.Languages: English, Belarusian, German, Russian

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Copenhagen (Denmark)

Stina Gustafsson

I’m a curator and art strategist specialising in the development of the art world and the cultural workforce through new technologies, such as blockchain. I advocate for a better understanding of the wider cultural workforce, and the inclusion of all roles in the wider ecosystem. Furthermore, I work with a wide variety of companies, institutions and platforms, advising them on their curatorial practices and their advancements in web3.On the side of my career, I also lead the art research initiative for blockchain foundation Department of Decentralization/ETHBerlin. Together with them I’ve curated and produced several exhibitions, educational events and reports on the subject of art and blockchain. I’ve worked with a wide variety of cultural and arts organisations and research companies, such as the Bundeskunsthalle, and future research agency Future Foundation.Though located in Copenhagen, I won’t be able to advise on relocations and residencies in Copenhagen or Denmark, due to the very strict immigration laws we, unfortunately, have here.Languages: Swedish, English

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Gainesville (Florida, USA)

Flounder Lee

Flounder Lee is an artist/curator and postgraduate researcher in Art & Media at the University of Plymouth, UK pursuing his PhD in art and curatorial practice. He received his BFA from the University of Florida and his MFA from California State University Long Beach—both in studio art and photography. He then taught full-time at universities in the US, Malaysia, and Dubai for 12+ years. Exhibitions curated include: The Future is…Ordinary? at the Shangyuan Art Museum, Beijing, China; On this night, for the first time, something will happen… at the Jean Paul Najar Foundation, Dubai, and Aerospacial at Herron School of Art and Design in Indianapolis. He founded and co-ran SpaceCamp MicroGallery, a tiny project space in Indianapolis. He has written several essays including for Tribe: Photography and New Media in the Arab World. His PhD project deals with mundane speculative futures through artistic and curatorial perspectives. He works using anti-oppressive practices—anti-racist, anti-colonial, anti-patriarchal, anti-heteronormative, anti-ableist, inclusive, and intersectional with decolonial and curatorial activism approaches.For the hotline, he can help work through developing projects, work with writing applications or statements, or just chat about art.Languages: English

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Geneva (Switzerland)

Tadeo Kohan

Curator and teacher, I have studied art history, aesthetics, literature and linguistics. Since 2017, I am an independent curator, mainly in Switzerland and France, but also in Italy, Kosovo and the Czech Republic. I have also been teaching art theory since 2020 at HEAD – Geneva School of Art and Design.In 2018, I co-founded with Gabrielle Boder the curatorial platform Collectif Détente. Curators of the Geneva off space ET-Espace Témoin for two years (2018-2019), we developed a reflection on the collaborative and experimental practice of the exhibition. We have been exploring since the relationship objects/spaces/bodies, linking visual arts and activations, with a strong emphasis on performance and dance. Joined by Camille Regli in 2020, the collective launches the curatorial research “Stitches” centered on contemporary textile creation and its political, historical and social aspects.In parallel, I have worked since 2010 as assistant curator and research associate in different museums (such as Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Petit Palais, National Museum of the History of immigration, Geneva’s Museum of Ethnography or Conservatory and Botanical Garden). In 2019, I was associate curator at the Drawing and Prints of the Center Pompidou, Paris.Languages: French, English, Spanish

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Paris (France)

Tadeo Kohan

Alexandra Goullier Lhomme

Alexandra Goullier Lhomme is an independent curator based in Paris. Specialised in contemporary art, she is particularly interested in performance art and video art. Her curatorial research lies on the porous nature of boundaries, whether geographical, social, temporal or of language. With a Master’s degree in Fine Art (Paris 1 - Panthéon-Sorbonne / New York University) and in Curating (Sorbonne), Alexandra Goullier Lhomme has been working as an art worker in Paris, London and New York. As an independent curator, she has collaborated with institutions such as KADIST, Cité internationale des arts, Fondation d’Entreprise Ricard and MAMAC – Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain of Nice, among others. As a curatorial assistant, she has been working for the château de Versailles’ contemporary art program (2018-2019) and at Palais de Tokyo (2017 – 2018), among others. Recently (2021), she was a Research Fellow for the Laboratoire espace cerveau, IAC - Institute of Contemporary Art, Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes.
She is the co-founder and co-director of prologue and Liquid Ground // Swapping Tongues, a curatorial initiative which aims to promote performance art and publish artist writings.Languages: English, French.

Sasha Pevak

I identify myself as an interdependent art worker, who has the practices of curator, researcher, writer, professor, and artist. I’m constantly moving between Western Europe and the countries of the so-called ‘post-Soviet space’. My practice is grounded in academic research and it critique, my Russian-Ukrainian origins and a certain cultural awareness of the socialist past. It is nourished by the interest in postcolonial and queer studies, decolonial thinking, as well by my experience of an Eastern European in Western Europe. I'm a member of the collectives "Beyond the post-soviet" and Curatorial hotline.Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, I have been directly involved in various strategic actions in support of the Ukrainian artistic scene. During the call, I can answer your questions and give you some guidelines about the situation in France and in certain countries of Europe.Languages: French, English, Russian

Julien Ribeiro

With a background in social anthropology, Julien Ribeiro is a cultural worker. Sometimes he is a curator, sometimes an artist, sometimes an author, sometimes he’s just putting some glitter on his eyes and sometimes he is giving up the idea by the weight of heteronormativity. He created Le Lavoir Public, an artistic space dedicated to the mutations of writings in Lyon. He worked for some years on the impact of politics on our lives and on our creative processes. The place of minorities is playing a central role in his research. He is a founding member of the WAW (We Are Weird) collective (LGBTQI and Contemporary Art archive). He was associated with the programming of the exhibition David Wojnarowicz - History Keeps Me Awake at Night at the Mudam-Luxembourg (2019). Now, as a curator, he is working at the Antre Peaux in Bourges (FR) and he is preparing an exhibition about the scream and its aesthetic and socio-political resonances. As an artist and author, he is working about a conflictual aesthetic, thinking the art world as an ecosystem in perpetual tension. As a human being, he is just a bit sad we can’t heal our wound with glitter.Languages: English, French.

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Sofia (Bulgaria)

Emma Rssx

I am an emerging artist, with a multi-disciplinary practice, ranging from writing, painting, drawing, sculpture and installation. I graduated last year from a degree in Visual Arts at HEAD - Geneva, Switzerland.My work delves into the web of the narrative, the manner in which we weave it, structure it, allow it to deviate from its original trajectory. It particularly focuses on the story that we, genderqueers and minorities, who identify outside the binary of gender, recount and tell.I am the initiator of a collaborative platform called Allôsunshine, a dedicated space where emerging artists discuss their work, process and challenges. We meet on discord, every 11 and 22 of each month, all year long. Allôsunshine has a dedicated room on discord where residencies, open calls and funding opportunities are shared, that you are more than welcome to join.
I am also part of a collective, AlienShe, which advocates for women and gender minorities through the arts. We operate between Paris and Marseille.As an emerging artist, I can offer sessions discussing your practice and process, helping you through residencies open calls, funding application and general support navigating the ups&downs of being an art practitioner in a commodified world.My pronouns are: iel/she.Languages: English, French.

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Vienna (Austria)

Brooklyn J. Pakathi

New media artist and independent curator, Brooklyn J. Pakathi explores the relationships we manifest with technologies, and through his practice, examines the formations of, enactments with and responses to those manifestations. Working within the fields of mixed realities at Johannesburg’s TMRW, his practice merges into the collaborative nature of contemporary art-making centred around the use and inclusion of digital tools. TMRW is a gallery space currently in Keyes Art Mile in Johannesburg and also, as The Mixed Reality Workshop, is a multidisciplinary arts and technology space that engages with the creation, development, production and dissemination of mixed reality art experience.Brooklyn J. Pakathi’s art-making through and with the use of new media and extended reality applications manifest from internal meditations on the ephemera of intimacy and the resulting outcomes as expressed in large part due to the internet. The works reveal themselves to the artist as he wanders through a space of dissociation online. In searching for the connectors of cause, meaning and sense of resolve, Pakathi’s practice fundamentally speaks to the tragic vulnerability of romance.Languages: Afrikaans, English, German, Zulu.

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Daria Kravchuk
Brooklyn J. Pakathi
Alexandra Goullier Lhomme
Julien Ribeiro
Alice Bonnot
Wadha Al-Aqeedi
Sasha Pevak
Thomas Conchou

curatorial hotline was conceived at the beginning of the Covid-19, when the restrictions on mobility and the rules of social distancing generated in us a new urgency to offer an immediate and imaginative solution to maintain contact, interaction and dialogue between artists and curators. curatorial hotline became thus an agora for meaningful, radical and simultaneously playful conversations, a non-hierarchical, self-organized initiative, which makes the art community more humane. Via developing this new format of connectivity, we created solidarity in action. We hope that this initiative will sustain in time and that the team will grow organically in order to respond to the ever-growing demand that we encounter.

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Wadha Al-Aqeedi

Wadha Al-Aqeedi is the co-founder of Mathqaf, a curator and an art historian, based between Paris and Doha. From 2016 to 2020, she worked at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha as an assistant curator, conceiving curatorial and exhibition projects for local and international audiences. Recently, Al-Aqeedi was the assistant curator for Fateh al-Moudarres: Colour, Extensity and Sense (2018,); M. F. Husain: Horses of the Sun (2019); Yto Barrada: My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nougat (2020) at Mathaf, Doha; and Our World is Burning (2020) at Palais de Tokyo, Paris. Presently, she is a PhD candidate at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Her research focuses on the history of performance art and its contemporary practices in the Arab world, from the 1980’s.Languages: Arabic, English, French.

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In order to make curatorial hotline as accessible as possible, we encourage artists to take only one appointment with one curator per month.

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Alice Bonnot

Alice Bonnot is an independent curator interested in the development of environmentally sustainable curatorial and artistic practices with a drive towards eco solutions. She is the co-founding director of Picnic, an exhibition space occupying a long vitrine in the Aylesham Centre in Peckham, London, and the founding director of the Zone d’Utopie Temporaire (Z.U.T.) residency programme, a nomadic annual residency addressing the notion of Utopia as a vehicle for artistic and critical comment. She is currently working on the launch of a sustainable art residency programme in Lisbon and writes about sustainability in the arts for Umbigo Magazine. Recent exhibitions include: Triple Point, Belo Campo, Lisbon, 2020-2021, Everything’s Mustard, Picnic, London, 2019, Out Of Office, PADA, Lisbon, 2019, Hyper Mesh, Assembly Point, London, 2019 and Bored but secured, Wozen, Lisbon, 2018. She lives and works between Lisbon and London.Languages: English, French.

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Thomas Conchou

Thomas Conchou is an independent curator, co-founder of the curatorial collective Syndicat Magnifique and curator for Societies, a Paris-based non-profit project initiated by Jérôme Poggi and supported by the Fondation de France as part of the Nouveaux commanditaires program. In 2020-2021, he is curator in residency at Maison populaire in Montreuil, a community centre dedicated to artistic practices and popular education where he will engage in a curatorial research focusing on queer contemporary practices and relationalities.After studying cultural management at Sciences Po Lyon, he graduated from the MA in Curatorial Practice from Université Paris 1 - Panthéon Sorbonne. Between 2012 and 2016, he worked at the Visual Arts Department of the City of Paris as project manager, before joining the artist collective Jeune Création as general coordinator. After serving as public relation manager of Galerie Jérôme Poggi, he joined Societies in 2017 as general coordinator and curator. He is in charge of developing the Nouveaux commanditaires program within the Paris Region through citizen-led artistic commissions to French and international artists (such as Société Réaliste, Guillaume Bresson, Ulla Von Brandenburg, Claude Closky, Attilla Csörgó, Wesley Meuris, Matali Crasset, Eva Taulois, Goiffon & Beauté, IRMA NAME, Gaëlle Choisne, Eve Chabanon, Marlène Huissoud, etc).Languages: English, French.

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Alexandra Goullier Lhomme

Alexandra Goullier Lhomme is an independent curator based in Paris. Specialised in contemporary art, she is particularly interested in performance art and video art. Her curatorial research lies on the porous nature of boundaries, whether geographical, social, temporal or of language. With a Master’s degree in Fine Art (Paris 1 - Panthéon-Sorbonne / New York University) and in Curating (Sorbonne – Paris 4), Alexandra Goullier Lhomme has been working as an art worker in Paris, London and New York. As an independent curator, she has collaborated with institutions such as KADIST, Cité internationale des arts, Fondation d’Entreprise Ricard and MAMAC – Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain of Nice, among others. As a curatorial assistant, she has been working with Jean de Loisy and Alfred Pacquement for the château de Versailles’ contemporary art program (2018-2019) and at Palais de Tokyo (2017 – 2018), among others. She is currently a Research Fellow for the Laboratoire espace cerveau, IAC - Institute of Contemporary Art, Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes. She is the co-founder and co-director of prologue and Liquid Ground // Swapping Tongues, a curatorial initiative which aims to promote performance art and publish artist writings.Languages: English, French.

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Daria Kravchuk

Daria Kravchuk is a curator, art manager, museologist and art journalist. Her recent curatorial practice focuses on the topics of rethinking and re-framing museum collections, working on the intersection of urbanism, architecture and contemporary art, researching projects, which are conceptual, interventionist, contextual, socially engaged and locally involved. She previously worked at the All-Russian Decorative and Applied art museum, Moscow, Rembrandthuis museum, Amsterdam, curated exhibitions at Triumph Gallery, Moscow, Schusev State Museum of Architecture, Moscow, New Holland, St.Petersburg, Peresvetov pereulok gallery, Moscow, used to be the Project Director at .ART company. Daria’s articles have been published by Iskusstvo Magazine and Mu[see]um. Currently Daria works as a Program Director at Artwin Gallery.Languages: English, Russian.

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Brooklyn J. Pakathi

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Sasha Pevak

I identify myself as an interdependent art worker, who has the practices of curator, researcher, writer, professor, and artist. Based in Paris, I’m constantly moving between Western Europe and the countries of the so-called "post-Soviet space". My practice is grounded in academic research, my Russian-Ukrainian origins and a certain cultural awareness of the socialist past. It is nourished by the interest in postcolonial, decolonial and queer studies, as well by my experience of an Eastern European person in Western Europe.My work is to a great extent research-based, however it involves a kaleidoscope of different types of knowledge. These are rooted in academic theory, contemporary culture and pop culture, personal experiences and narratives, emotions and social interactions. As a result, curatorial research can take different forms ranging from archive research, field work and studio visits to urban walks, various conversations, collective work and psychoanalysis. In my curatorial practice, I use social situations and mental maps as main tools, building on the associations and underlying connections between images, concepts, spaces, and memories.Languages: English, French, Russian

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Julien Ribeiro

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Support us

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curatorial hotline began at the end of the first Covid lockdown. It offered a quick collective response to an emergency, when most of the cultural spaces were closed or operated only partially, while the need to maintain social links and to reconnect was higher than ever. Since then, our collective has allowed more than 600 art workers to begin or to continue discussing their practice, ideas, and forms of professionalization, or simply to chat in the times of social distancing. To curatorial hotline have contributed so far: Alice Bonnot, Daria Kravchuk, Alexandra Goullier Lhomme, Stina Gustafsson, Tadeo Kohan, Flounder Lee, Brooklyn J. Pakathi, Sasha Pevak, Julien Ribeiro, Emma Rssx, Luise Willer, and Andrei Zavadski.

In the moment of a devastating full scale war in Ukraine and other ongoing violences, we are reactivating curatorial hotline on April 1 for the period of one month. During this session, we are addressing our efforts, knowledges, and attention to the exiled artworkers, who need to adapt to a new environment, rebuild networks, or share their stories.In April, we propose to exiled art workers to book an informal 1-hour video call with one of the participating curators. To do this, click on a city from the list here below, choose your interlocutor and a time slot, and proceed with the reservation. Your booking will be confirmed by an email with a link to a video call, where the meeting will happen.On this specific occasion, the collective of curatorial hotline has grown, thanks to the art professionnals who responded to our call to join efforts. We feel important to mention that we will surely not have all the answers to your questions. Despite our deep empathy and emotional involvement, we do not know what it means to be in exile and especially what it means to find yourself in a war zone. So it is with a lot of humility that we are opening April slots, hoping to help with the knowledges and experiences that we have. We also remind you that in order to make curatorial hotline as accessible as possible, we ask you to book only with one person during this month.

In order to make curatorial hotline as accessible as possible, we ask you to take only one appointment with one curator per month.

Pandemic-related events compelled us to find ways to relate differently towards each other and to the world around us. We are currently witnessing the global need within the art communities to re-connect, to form another dimension of social cohesion and interaction, where responses to ongoing inequity, precarity, and verticality in various fields of art production are needed more than ever. As a reaction to these problematics we, an informal group of like-minded art-professionals coming from different contexts and with diverse backgrounds, launched a collective initiative and a call for solidarity named curatorial hotline. Since May 2020, each member of our polylingual collective devotes several hours of their time per month to video calls of about 45-60 minutes with emerging artists and art workers or those lacking regular follow-up, and those who feel disconnected or isolated. During these meetings, we share ideas and references, exchange about work experiences, or simply talk.The time slots are published at the beginning of every month on our website via a specific platform, and the appointments are given by curators on a voluntary basis and without preselection. In order to make curatorial hotline as accessible as possible, we encourage youto take only one appointment with one curator per month.Available for a call this month:

Daria Kravchuk
Brooklyn J. Pakathi
Wadha Al-Aqeedi
Alexandra Goullier Lhomme
Julien Ribeiro
Alice Bonnot
Sasha Pevak
Thomas Conchou

Wadha Al-Aqeedi

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Thomas Conchou

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Alexandra Goullier Lhomme

Alexandra Goullier Lhomme is an independent curator based in Paris. Specialised in contemporary art, she is particularly interested in performance art and video art. Her curatorial research lies on the porous nature of boundaries, whether geographical, social, temporal or of language. With a Master’s degree in Fine Art (Paris 1 - Panthéon-Sorbonne / New York University) and in Curating (Sorbonne – Paris 4), Alexandra Goullier Lhomme has been working as an art worker in Paris, London and New York. As an independent curator, she has collaborated with institutions such as KADIST, Cité internationale des arts, Fondation d’Entreprise Ricard and MAMAC – Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain of Nice, among others. As a curatorial assistant, she has been working with Jean de Loisy and Alfred Pacquement for the château de Versailles’ contemporary art program (2018-2019) and at Palais de Tokyo (2017 – 2018), among others. She is currently a Research Fellow for the Laboratoire espace cerveau, IAC - Institute of Contemporary Art, Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes. She is the co-founder and co-director of prologue and Liquid Ground // Swapping Tongues, a curatorial initiative which aims to promote performance art and publish artist writings.Languages: English, French.

Brooklyn J. Pakathi

Sasha Pevak

Sasha Pevak (1988) is an independent art worker based between Paris and Moscow. He is interested in the political nature of art, its infrastructures, and the inner workings that lie beneath the surface. In a practice that is pragmatist, sensitive, and at times tinged with nostalgia, he looks to question the boundaries between different fields of art production, and to introduce multiple subjectivities by mixing individual and collective narratives and emotions. He experiments with forms of collective work and situations that allow to collaborate, both intellectually and emotionally, on developing the meanings of writings, discourses, artworks.Sasha Pevak previously collaborated, among others, with the National Institute for Art History, le Frac Île-de-France, DOC!, Galerie Poggi, Paris 8 University in Paris, ENSA & La Box in Bourges, EESAB & 40mcube in Brittany, ESADMM & Manifesta 13 in Marseille, HISK in Ghent, Garage Museum, International Biennale of Contemporary art, and CCI Fabrika in Moscow. He is part of the teaching team of ENSA Bourges, the IESA in Paris, and a visiting lecturer at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. He contributed to the following magazines: The Garage Journal: Studies in Art, Museums & Culture, Marges, Optical Sound, Switch (on Paper), and others. In May 2020, in the context of the Coronavirus pandemic, he launched a collective initiative curatorial hotline. He is a PhD candidate at the University of Paris 8.Languages: English, French, Russian.

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Julien Ribeiro

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