Carolina

"It has been seven years since I graduated from the BA. I actually wanted to continue with an MA after I finished the BA; I was completely taken with my chosen career but sometimes things don’t quite work out as you plan them so in the end, I couldn’t accept the offers that I had for MAs and instead had to get a full time job. I ended up working in the area of fundraising for five years, more specifically donor data management, and although I enjoyed it and learned a lot, I always knew that I had to continue with the plan that I left behind.

Two years ago, I moved to Colombia with the view of embarking on an MA in Latin American Art, as it kind of made sense studying a ‘topic’ in ‘context’. Here I worked for an important gallery and was able to work at ArtBO, Bogotá’s art fair, which is pretty new in the circuit but it already features as one of the most poignant. Without me realising, the fair ended up being an excellent networking place and I had the opportunity to meet various people, mostly gallery owners and artists from around the continent. Although Colombia’s contemporary art scene is up and coming, there are not a lot of options to pursue an academic career; hence I have decided to do my MA in Buenos Aires.

Argentina seems to have a much older and prestigious academic tradition in the field of the arts and humanities so the offer there is pretty interesting, and most of the universities are public, therefore higher education is actually extremely affordable. I will be applying to both the MA in Cultural Criticism at (IUNA) National University Institute for the Arts and the MA in Curating Visual Arts (UNTREF) Universidad Nacional del Tres de Febrero. Whilst I am there, I will be working in an art gallery, and hopefully developing my practice working collaboratively in art related projects. My main interest remains linked to a course in the BA, called Practising Theory given by Dr Gavin Butt, and the writings of Peggy Phelan, Jane Blocker, Amelia Jones and Judith Butler."