Curating in COVID: challenges and wins

From Zoom installations to virtual media calls, curator Natalie King talks about curating an international exhibition mid-pandemic.
Woman in Australian bush with Victorian dress and rabbit headdress..

Melbourne based curator Natalie King is no stranger to curating exhibitions across distance, having been charged with presenting Tracey Moffatt’s work for the Australian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2017, among other important international exhibitions across Japan, Indonesia, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, India, Thailand and New Zealand.

But she had never curated a major international exhibition entirely over Zoom – until the pandemic. The exhibition Reversible Destiny: Australian and Japanese contemporary photography opened last week at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum (TOP), as part of the Olympics Cultural Olympiad, and it’s a show King co-curated remotely during COVID, while also preparing artist Yuki Kihara’s presentation for Aotearoa/ New Zealand at the 59th Venice Biennale 2022.

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Gina Fairley is ArtsHub's National Visual Arts Editor. For a decade she worked as a freelance writer and curator across Southeast Asia and was previously the Regional Contributing Editor for Hong Kong based magazines Asian Art News and World Sculpture News. Prior to writing she worked as an arts manager in America and Australia for 14 years, including the regional gallery, biennale and commercial sectors. She is based in Mittagong, regional NSW. Twitter: @ginafairley Instagram: fairleygina