Join us for a panel discussion with curator Giulia Civardi of the and Robert Leckie, Director of on the occasion of the exhibition ‘The stairway that separates my room from my memory’ a collaborative project between MA Curating students from the 91 in conversation with Giulia Civardi at the Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation in Chelsea.
The stairway that separates my room from my memory takes its title from a 1990 poem, The Manifestations of the Voyage by the painter and poet Etel Adnan (b.1925). Presenting works from the Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation’s own collection, in addition to works by artists who have experienced diaspora and exile, the exhibition aims to show migration as an integral theme in contemporary artistic production while recreating the exhibition space as a ‘home’ for mutual dialogue between diasporic artists and audiences.
The coinciding research panel at the 91 Institute will focus on the important role that non-profit art spaces and the artistic residency model play in supporting artists in the current climate of ongoing political turmoil, contested and divisive ideologies within public and private art institutions. The presenters along with two artists from each institution will discuss the extent to which non-profits can provide a space of collaboration, independent research and sustain multiple artistic and curatorial voices. Coincidentally, the historic legacy of residency programs such as in supporting artistic production through the studio practice as well as the curatorial focus on intermedia, site-responsive, and community-oriented approaches of the Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation will be considered in relation to how artists can be supported to produce work in their chosen media and experiment with multi-media practices as a result of their collaborations within the non-profit model.
Through conversation and shared perspectives, the panel aims to examine how the concept of “home” encompassing memory and identity serves artists as an ongoing source for research as part of their residency or future exhibition projects.
This event is organised by the MA Curating: Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation Exhibition Group. The stairway that separates my room from my memory is on view at the Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation in Chelsea between the 4 – 20 June.
Speakers:
Robert Leckie is Director of , a leading non-profit arts organisation based in south London. He was previously Director of Spike Island in Bristol from 2018 to 2024 and Curator at Gasworks from 2011 to 2018. Over the past fifteen years, Robert has curated major solo and survey exhibitions by artists including Pacita Abad (with Pio Abad), Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Peggy Ahwesh (with Erika Balsom), Candice Lin, and Rosemary Mayer, as well as touring shows on Donald Rodney (with Nicole Yip) and Donald Locke. Robert has co-edited and contributed to publications including Donald Locke: Resistant Forms (Spike Island, Ikon Gallery and Camden Art Centre, 2025), Donald Rodney: A Reader (Whitechapel Gallery, 2025), Rosemary Mayer: Ways of Attaching (König, 2023), Candice Lin: Pigs and Poison (Mousse Publishing, 2023), Peggy Ahwesh: Vision Machines (Mousse Publishing, 2021), and Sidsel Meineche Hansen: SECOND SEX WAR (Paraguay Press, 2019). He was also a jury member for the 2022 Turner Prize.
(b. 2001 Jakarta, Indonesia; lives and works in Bali, Indonesia) is a visual artist whose practice spans painting, sculpture, video, and installation, and is best known for his heavily textured, uncanny works in which archival imagery appears fragmented and unstable. Working with personal and found archives, he engages this material through processes of fragmentation, displacement, and layering, alongside shifts in scale and format. At Gasworks, Mar will investigate items “collected” by Sir Stamford Raffles during his rule in Java at Lieutenant General (1811-1816), now housed at the British Museum, as well as the Woodbury & Page photo studio, founded in Batavia (Jakarta) in 1857.
is Curator and Collection Manager at the non-profit arts organisation where she works on collaborative projects and exhibitions, and collection research and care. As an independent curator, Giulia has presented projects at Tate Modern, Rupert Centre for Art and Education and has recently curated The Soup at Madragoa, and REVIVAL at Francesca Minini. Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation was founded by collector and arts patron Nicoletta Fiorucci to promote experimentation and innovation in contemporary art, with a focus on ecology, sustainability, and inclusivity. The Foundation operates through a network of homes and spaces across Europe, supporting artists and cultural institutions through exhibitions, events, publications, and residencies.
Tai Shani’s artistic practice, comprising performance, film, photography, and installation, uses experimental writing as a guiding method. Oscillating between theoretical concepts and visceral details, Shani’s texts attempt to create poetic coordinates in order to cultivate fragmentary cosmologies of marginalised nonsovereignty. Taking cues from both mournful and undead histories of reproductive labour, illness and solidarity, her work is invested in recovering feminised aesthetic modes – such as the floral, the trippy or the gothic – in a register of utopian militancy. In this vein, the epic, in both its literary long-form and excessive affect, often shapes Shani’s approach: Her long-term projects work through historical and mythical narratives, such as Christine de Pizan’s allegorical city of women or the social history of psychedelic ergot poisoning. Extending into divergent formats and collaborations. Shani’s projects examine desire in its (infra-)structural dimension, exploring a realism that materially fantasises against the patriarchal racial capitalist present. Tai Shani is the joint 2019 Turner Prize winner together with Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Helen Cammock and Oscar Murillo. Her work has been shown extensively in Britain and internationally.
