Talk by Nayia Yiakoumaki

The Nature of Archives and The Nature of the Beast
SALT Galata, Workshop IV

Curator and artist Nayia Yiakoumaki will discuss curatorial practice in relation to archives. With a focus on increasing opportunities for engagement, Yiakoumaki refers to the process of curating from archives as a historiographical operation with comparisons to Paul Ricoeur’s “constituents of historiography.” She draws on examples from her own work at the Whitechapel Gallery (London) – specifically, on Goshka Macuga’s The Nature of the Beast, an installation project made up of historical objects and documents that addressed issues of curating, historiography and the expanding definition of the archive. For Yiakoumaki, it provides a solid model for curators and artists to work together with an archive and engage with historical material.

Since 2005, Nayia Yiakoumaki has been Archive Curator at the Whitechapel Gallery. Born in Athens in 1967, she completed a Ph.D. in Visual Arts from the Department of Curating, Goldsmiths, University of London, with her thesis Curating Archives, Archiving Curating. She has lectured extensively in Athens and London. Since 2001, she has co-curated FeedBack Project and co-edited FeedBack, a periodical on contemporary curating.

The talk will be held in English.

Kindly supported by the British Council.