Dr Anna Colin
Staff details
I have worked as a curator for the past twenty years, whether in a freelance or institutional capacity. Her work is engaged with collaborative processes and cultural practices invested at local, social, educational, and environmental levels. Invested in counter-hegemonic spaces, histories, and figures, her practice straddles the curatorial, the pedagogical, the social, the ecological, and the horticultural.
In 2013, I co-founded Open School East, an alternative art school and community space in London, then Margate, where she was a director for 8 years. Open School East formed a part of her PhD which, in exploring multi-public educational and cultural spaces in England since the late 19th century, unpacked the notion of the alternative in relation to governance, spatiality, and chrononormativity.
I split my time between teaching on the MFA Curating, working on small and large-scale projects, writing, and training in horticulture and permaculture design.
Academic qualifications
- PhD, School of Geography, University of Nottingham 2022
- Level 2 Practical Horticulture Certificate, Royal Horticultural Society 2022
- MA Curating Contemporary Art, Royal College of Art 2005
- BA Arts Management, London Southbank University 2003
Research interests
My areas of curatorial engagement started in sound art, experimental music and tactical media, before migrating towards other marginalised and/or politically symbolic topics, histories, figures and spaces, such as the agricultural and digital commons, the Black Atlantic, the witch as a symbol of feminist and queer resistance, and colonialism’s impact on the natural environment. These research interests largely manifested in exhibitions and publications at Gasworks, London, Bétonsalon, Paris, and CIC, Cairo.
My current research interests are focused on:
- cultural production at the service of ecosystems
- sustainable cultural and social practices
- critical, participatory, land-based pedagogies
- differential institutional models
I welcome doctoral applicants seeking to work in one or several of these different areas.
Publications and research outputs
Book Section
Colin, Anna. 2022. Éducation, art, démocratie, communauté. In: Hélène Meisel, ed. L'Art d'apprendre. Une école des créateurs. Metz: Éditions du Centre Pompidou-Metz. ISBN 9782359830651
Conference or Workshop Item
Colin, Anna. 2023. 'Des pratiques pédagogiques, institutionnelles et paysagères critiques'. In: Journées de recherche et de création "Weather Report": Les arts de subsister dans un monde abîmé. ESAD Valence, France 30-31 January 2023.
Colin, Anna. 2022. 'From alternative to permacultural institutions'. In: MFA Art + MFA Curating Lecture Series. Goldsmiths, University of London, United Kingdom 28 November 2022.
Exhibition Catalogue
Colin, Anna. 2023. Chaleur humaine.
Report
Colin, Anna. 2022. Seeding the Garden: our Place in Lewisham's Green Infrastructure. Other. Goldsmiths, University of London, London.
Show/Exhibition
Colin, Anna. 2023. Chaleur humaine. In: "Chaleur humaine", FRAC Grand-Large Hauts-de-France, France, 10 June 2023 - 14 January 2024.
Thesis
Colin, Anna. 2022. Alternative to what? Alternative how? A Study of Multi-Public Educational and Cultural Spaces in England since the Late Nineteenth Century. Doctoral thesis, University of Nottingham
Further profile content
Featured publications
2023:
Chaleur Humaine
Co-editor
2020:
Francesc Ruiz: Panal
Co-editor
2019:
Hella Jongerius : Entrelacs, une recherche tissée / Interlace, Woven Research
Co-editor
2014:
The Witching Hour
Editor
2012:
Witches: Hunted, Appropriated, Empowered, Queered
Editor
Past work and residencies
I have worked as associate curator at Lafayette Anticipations in Paris (2014-20); associate director of Bétonsalon – Centre for art and research, Paris (2011-12); curator at Gasworks, London (2007-10); and radio presenter at Resonance FM, London (2002-5). I was co-curator, with Lydia Yee, of British Art Show 8 in 2015-16 (Leeds, Edinburgh, Norwich and Southampton), and has curated exhibitions and projects at venues including CA2M, Móstoles/Madrid; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Victoria Gallery & Museum, Liverpool; Contemporary Image Collective, Cairo; GAM, Turin; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Guarene; La Synagogue de Delme, Delme; The Women’s Library, London; and The European Culture Congress, Wroclaw.
I have done residencies and held fellowships at LUMA, Arles; Centro Cultural Montehermoso, Vitoria-Gasteiz; FRAME – HIAP, Helsinki; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; Contemporary Art Society, London; and La Maison populaire, Montreuil.
