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The BIPOC Curators Shaping Culture in London right now
Written by: Malishka Shaikh-Kannamwar @malishqka
BIPOC curators are on the up like never before. If you want a perfectly-executed vision, you are bound to reach out to the best - who are, more often than not, people of colour, who also happen to be Queer, and who really bring the right flavour to your work. As we enter the festive season, we have a roundup of our favourite London-based curators, so you’re only hiring the best for anything and everything here on out.
The creative industry heavily relies on curation, whether it is for a collection or collective, and our curators serve that very requirement with flying colours. Hiring a curator for an event is like having food at a dinner party. They are the most important part of any event because they are the ones who turn a mere gathering into a proper event. Any event, exhibition, party or fundraiser needs someone to streamline the environment and selection of materials there to turn it into an experience, and that is exactly what our stand-out curators are the best at doing - creating experiences.
Bailey Davis
First up on our list is Bailey Davis. Apart from being editor-in-chief of Zeal magazine and a DJ, she curates everything from exhibitions to six-day train journeys. Bailey centrises community in all her ventures from set design or large-scale event planning, which is apparent in the layout and logistical considerations of all her endeavours. This very tasteful approach to curating spaces that make you feel like part of a larger ecosystem is her USP. Her attention to detail elevates any event from simply something to RSVP for, to look forward to immerse yourself in. For Project Playground, she takes on a twelve-carriage train where each room serves a different functional or social purpose, while combining traditional Mongolian environment with that of Playground Express’ with her team. Her other projects involve artist and design curation for “Rouse” which she co-founded as a space for celebrating musical storytelling vinyl and DJ sets. Almost every project she is involved in feels like it has something to say that we wouldn’t find elsewhere. With a distinct voice and vision like hers shaping the British creative space for the better, we can’t wait to see what she does next.
@carlottanw on Instagram
Péjú Oshin
Péjú Oshin is our next curator. Having won the 2024 Curator of the Year at the Nigerians in Diaspora Awards, she has curated events for the likes of the Barbican Art Centre and Tate that help audiences connect with presented material in an expansive manner. Having held the position of Curator of Young People’s Programmes at Tate, her art exhibitions and public programming events recontextualise the need and value of art in an age that is increasingly leaving it behind. For “Forget Me Not: Reassembling the Barbican Archives”, for example, she works with events where people reevaluate collective cultural memory through looking at archives. Oshin’s work is deeply concerned with the politics of art and its ever-prevalence, and is known to work with Black artists like Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Ndidi Emefiele and Heather Agyepong to center BIPOC voices in her discussions of art. Apart from her work as a curator, she is also a Writer who has written for publications like Financial Times HTSI and Gagosian Quarterly, and is a Lecturer at UAL Central Saint Martins, Royal College of Art and London College of Fashion among other many, many cool things.
pejuoshin.com pejuoshin.com
Tosin Adeosun
Up next is Tosin Adeosun, the founder of African Style Archive. An archivist of African fashion history and visual culture, she has worked on multiple projects to highlight and truly represent, instead of just tokenising, African fashion across mediums. She has curated everything from visuals for Byredo magazine’s Bal d’Afrique, to a library of rare material which records diasporic fashion and culture for African Style Archive. Her work for the Rwanda Cultural Heritage Academy also involved her digitising over 1,500 materials for their Google Arts & Culture archive. Her work examines traditional and cultural history microscopically which makes her as much of an aficionado as it does a creative and reliable curator. Outside of curation, our favourite project by her has to be her collaboration with Ahluwalia for its SS23 ‘Africa is Limitless’ collection. Her archives are sure to be a staple on your Pinterest, and we can’t wait to see the collection grow.
tosinadeosun.com africanstylearchive.com tosinadeosun.com
To be an outstanding curator, you must have a singular perspective that you're able to execute into a full experience that audiences easily consume. A curator doesn't tell you what to feel, rather, they intentionally present you with things that will definitely make you feel a lot. In a big way, curators are the most multidisciplinary artists there are, and it's about time they get their flowers in the creative industry.
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