OPEN CALL for guest curator!

Lottozero is looking for a guest curator for Textile Culture Net!

Textile Culture Net is an international network of four textile institutions working on the cutting edge between art, design and fashion: Central Museum of Textiles in Łódź (Poland), Lottozero in Prato (Italy), TextielMuseum in Tilburg (The Netherlands) and CHAT (Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile) in Hong Kong, who share the common ambition to develop new curatorial practices, engage younger and more diverse audiences and collaborate internationally.
Born informally and spontaneously in spring 2020 against the backdrop of the global pandemic, the four institutions joined forces to conceive what would become a long-running experimental collaboration, spanning a series of online exhibitions and exchanging of ideas, methodologies and skills beyond geographical boundaries. The network intends to develop new curatorial practices, offering space to a diverse palette of cultural perspectives, as well as ways to present, collect and facilitate the making of textile art and design all over the world.
Since 2022 Textile Culture Net is co-funded by the European Union through the Creative Europe Program.
Starting June 2023 until July 2024, all 4 TCN curators and 4 guest curators will meet online monthly in order to define the yearly exhibition program, which consists of 4 online group exhibitions, conceived and designed to be presented on the respective Instagram platforms.

Each guest curator will present the theme of their curatorial proposal and the artists they have selected, and all other curators will be invited to respond with artworks from their collections or their creative network.
The exhibitions, based on different curatorial concepts but connected to textiles, are the result of a collective process, which gathers diverse curatorial approaches, confronted in a dialectical and constructive way.
The exhibitions program will start in September 2023 and will run until June 2024.
At the end of the project, a publication will be realized both in printed and digital version, in order to collect the contents of the 4 online exhibitions.

CURATOR’S COMMITMENTS

  • Propose an exhibition concept, based on a selection of artists working with textile media, and/or fashion and textile design, following a specific digital format which has been developed during the previous TCN editions, and will be further developed and improved for the 2023/2024 edition.

  • Attend an online workshop held by German association BIWOC Rising, aimed at developing a diversity strategy, as a common and shared ground between the curators involved into the project (3h, in June 2023).

  • Propose artworks for the 3 exhibitions presented by the other guest-curators.

  • Attend 10 online meetings (1h, from June 2023 to July 2024) with the curators from TCN’s institutions and guest-curators (1 meeting to introduce the curatorial practice, 8 meetings to prepare the 4 exhibitions, 1 final meeting at the end of the project).

  • Publish the contents of the 4 exhibitions on his/her personal (or institutional) Instagram account.

  • Participation in the project as a guest curator will also be a way to forge closer relations with the inviting institution (Lottozero), with whom there will be some occasions of confrontation/collaboration on certain aspects, which will be better defined later.

REQUIREMENTS

The following requirements will be given priority in the selection process:

  • Curatorial experience in the field of textile art, textile design and fashion.

  • Having nationality and/or residence in non-European countries and having an in-depth knowledge of the non-European art scene, documented through projects/research carried out.

  • Having a curatorial approach that takes into account cross-cutting issues of inclusion and diversity, in particular gender balance.


FEE

The selected curator will receive a fee of EUR 3,000 net of VAT but gross of any other eventual charges (these depend on the individual financial situation, like geographic location and local laws).
The fee will be paid in two installments, a deposit of 30% after signing the contract and the rest at the end of the project.


HOW TO APPLY

Applications must be submitted by 14 May 2023 by filling in the online form at this link: TYPE FORM

Previous TCN online exhibitions (2020-2023) have been published on the TCN institutions’ Instagram channel, with a series of posts framed by the TCN logo:

Lottozero IG
TextielMuseum IG
Central Museum of Textiles IG
CHAT (Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile) IG

Tessa Moroder