Dr Simon Sheikh

Simon researches the modalities and potentialities of curating, relating to exhibition-making and political imaginaries.

Staff details

Position

Reader in Curating, Programme Director

Department

Art

Email

s.sheikh (@gold.ac.uk)

Simon Sheikh's research deals with the modalities and potentialities of curating, within the relation between exhibition-making and political imaginaries. He is concerned with how exhibitions articulate through arrangement, narrative and spatialization, as well as how the very format of the exhibition can be expanded, negated or transformed.

Research areas thus include the making of publics, the instituting of subjectivity and the politics of display, both in terms of critical writing, the conceptualization and realization of exhibition projects, and in the form of an ongoing formulation of histories of exhibition making and reception.

Recently he has engaged in making former the notion of ‘the West’, in how Capital can be read, re-read and represented, and in the artistic practices of archiving, circulation and dissemination that can be viewed as unauthorized, and running counter to sanctified cultural politics and forms.

Teaching

Prior to arriving at Goldsmiths, Simon served as the course leader and lecturer for the Critical Studies Programme at the Malmoe Art Academy in Sweden for seven years. He has also been a lecturer at Funen Art Academy in Denmark.

Professional projects

Simon has been a curator for NIKCA in Helsinki and worked for three years as the director of Overgarden, Institute of Contemporary Art in Copenhagan.

His most recent curated exhibitions include Reading / Capital (For Althusser) at DEPO in Istanbul (2014), Unauthorized at Inter Arts Lab in Malmö (2012), and All That Fits: The Aesthetics of Journalism at QUAD in Derby (2011). 

Publications and research outputs

Book Section

Hernández Velázquez, Y. M.. 2019. Imagining Curatorial Practice after 1972. In: Paul O'Neill; Simon Sheikh; Lucy Steeds and Mick Wilson, eds. Curating after the Global: Roadmaps for the Present. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, pp. 255-270. ISBN 9780262537902

Sheikh, Simon. 2017. The Magmas: On Institutions and Instituting. In: Paul O'Neill; Lucy Steeds and Mick Wilson, eds. How Institutions think: Between Contemporary Art and Curatorial Discourse. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 126-131. ISBN 978-0-262-53432-1

Sheikh, Simon. 2017. A Contemporary Observatory for the City. In: Kate Gray, ed. Towards a City Observatory – Constellations of art, collaboration and locality. Edinburgh: Collective, pp. 12-18. ISBN 978-1-873653-18-0

Article

Sheikh, Simon. 2021. The roads of rage and ruin: contemporary art and its publics after the global. Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, 13(1), 2010335. ISSN 2000-4214

Sheikh, Simon. 2017. From Para to Post: The Rise and Fall of Curatorial Reason. Springerin, XXIII(1, 201), pp. 16-20.

Sheikh, Simon. 2016. Biennales and conflict questionnaire. Art and the Public Sphere, 5(2), pp. 137-166. ISSN 2042-793X

Exhibition Catalogue

Sheikh, Simon. 2005. Random Precision – Re-Representing Berlin.

Sheikh, Simon and Koester, Joahim. 1995. Authority and Incident: A Conversation with Michael Joo.

Sheikh, Simon. 1994. Stain of the Real.

Show/Exhibition

Sheikh, Simon and Hlalvajova, Maria. 2011. On Horizons. In: "Vectors of the Possible", BAK – basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, Netherlands, 2010-11.

Sheikh, Simon. 2010. Vectors of the Possible. In: "Vectors of the Possible", Utrecht, Netherlands, 12 September - 28 November 2010.

Sheikh, Simon. 1994. The Reality of Future. In: "Zukunft Versus No More Reality", Galleri Nicolai Wallner.

Edited Book

Hlavajova, Maria and Sheikh, Simon, eds. 2017. Former West: Art and the Contemporary After 1989. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 9780262533836

Hlavajova, Maria; Sheikh, Simon and Winder, Jill, eds. 2011. On Horizons: A Critical Reader on Contemporary Art. Rotterdam and Utrecht: Post Editions and BAK basis voor actuele kunst. ISBN 9789460830372

Sheikh, Simon, ed. 2007. Konst, makt och politik, Skriftserien Kairos 12. Stockholm: Raster förlag.