The Nomadic · Edition 9

2024: Who Is Being Heard?

DatesSeptember–October 2024

WhereFinland · Norway · Sweden

Cohort8 curators

2024: Who Is Being Heard? — group photograph — 2024: Who Is Being Heard? — Finland · Norway · Sweden.

The edition

What this one was about.

CPR's ninth fully-funded research program, again set in the Nordic region, continued the organization's recent focus on whose voices structure a regional art scene and whose remain unheard — following directly on from 2023's inquiry into representation and colonial history in the North.

Applications were accepted from May 6 to June 15, 2024, ahead of the September–October residency, for up to eight international curators following CPR's standard nomadic format of studio visits, institutional tours, and lectures on local history and politics. The program was backed by a wide coalition of Nordic funders: the Nordic Culture Fund, Frame Finland, the Finnish Cultural Institute of New York, the Office for Contemporary Art Norway, IASPIS, and the Swedish Arts Grants Committee's International Programme for Visual and Applied Arts.

The cohort

8 curators.

Azar Mahmoudian

Curator, Iran/Austria

Azar Mahmoudian is an independent curator and educator. Mahmoudian participated in the Curatorial Program for Research in 2024 as part of CPR: Who Is Being Heard? Her projects include Sensible Grounds, a multi-chapter program of moving image practices presented at Fundación Antoni Tàpies, LUX, Nida Art Colony, Bétonsalon, SAVVY Contemporary, and Tensta Konsthall, among others; When Legacies Become Debts at The Mosaic Rooms, London; and Shifting Panoramas, presented at TMoCA and various off-spaces in Tehran, as well as KW, DAZ, and feldfünf in Berlin. She directs a shape-shifting art school between Tehran, the Armenian mountains, and other rural places in the region, and co-organized kaf, a collective study space in Tehran; both platforms deliberately refrain from having an online presence. She is currently a PhD fellow at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna.

Isra Al Kassi

Curator, UK

Isra Al Kassi (Iran/UK) is a London-based curator, writer, and co-founder of T A P E Collective, a cross-art curatorial collective on a mission to demystify the industry and represent could-be-cult-classic moving image work through curation, production, and distribution. Al Kassi participated in the Curatorial Program for Research in 2024 as part of CPR: Who Is Being Heard? With a background in events and marketing, she is also an outreach and audience development consultant with a particular interest in mindful audience growth and creating accessible spaces for mixed-heritage storytellers and audiences. Her curatorial background is primarily self-taught, growing from a desire to create inclusive and alternative spaces. Since co-founding T A P E Collective in 2015 with Angela Moneke, she has curated for the London Film Festival, London Short Film Festival, BFI Southbank, Reclaim the Frame, and Aesthetica Short Film Festival, and continues to develop ways of curating collaboratively with peers and local and global communities.

Kholisile Dhliwayo

Curator, Australia/USA

Kholisile Dhliwayo is an African-Australian curator, artist, and architect whose work engages Black diasporic knowledge systems and cultural practices. Dhliwayo participated in the Curatorial Program for Research in 2024 as part of CPR: Who Is Being Heard? He founded afrOURban, a non-profit organization dedicated to documenting and celebrating Black culture in the diaspora and on the African continent, where he curates Black Diasporas, an oral-narrative mapping project documenting spaces meaningful to Black people; the project has won awards from the Victorian Government (Australia), The New School's Good Interventions (USA), and ArchiTeam (Australia). He is a 2023–24 Cheng Fellow with the Social Innovation and Change Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School and a 2023 Center for Architecture Lab Resident, where he curated Making Home: Affirming Black Diasporic Agency. He co-curated the award-winning Melbourne Design Week exhibitions SAY IT LOUD Naarm-Melbourne (2022) and Perspectives (2023), and created the Brooklyn Bronzes sculptures at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art (MOCADA) honoring Black Brooklyn community leaders. As a built-environment professional, he has contributed to projects including La Guardia Airport Terminal B, The Javits Center, the Canadian Senate Building, and David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center.

Larisa Zmud

Curator, Argentina

Larisa Zmud is a curator based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, who uses curating to explore gender and food politics to address social justice and equity. Zmud participated in the Curatorial Program for Research in 2024 as part of CPR: Who Is Being Heard? She grew up nomadic, living between the coastal city of Mar del Plata and the Patagonian Steppe, where her father was a rural teacher in Mapuche communities — an experience of multi-diverse ways of living that continues to shape her practice. Zmud holds a BA in Art Curating and a Master's in Politics and Gender Studies, and in 2014 attended the Artists, Critics, and Curators Program of Torcuato Di Tella University led by Inés Katzenstein. She founded Sin Destino Aparente, critical-thinking groups with a gender perspective, and from 2020–21 was a member of Argentina's National Directorate of Cultural Policies at the Ministry for Equality for Women, Gender and Diversity. She is part of the feminist collective Belleza y Felicidad Fiorito, where she coordinates Comedor Gourmet, an artistic and gastronomic space that redefines nutrition as a way of thinking about the politics of bodies and desire, and she coordinates Mapa Contemporáneo de Arte Argentino en Construcción, created at the CIMAM 2023 Annual Conference. She was a resident of the 2024 KADIST program.

Rose Bouthillier

Curator, Canada

Rose Bouthillier is a contemporary art curator and writer based in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. Bouthillier participated in the Curatorial Program for Research in 2024 as part of CPR: Who Is Being Heard? Throughout her career, her focus has been on working closely with artists to develop and present new projects, promoting under-recognized voices and creating thoughtful inter-generational dialogues. She joined the Bonavista Biennale as Artistic Director in 2022 and co-curated its 2023 edition, Host, with Ryan Rice, embedding contemporary art in the landscapes and daily places of rural Newfoundland communities. Previously, she served as Curator (Exhibitions) at Remai Modern in Saskatoon, where she programmed solo exhibitions by Puppies Puppies (Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo), Zadie Xa, and Walter Scott. Her writing has appeared in monographs on artists including Tony Lewis, Xavier Cha, Kirk Mangus, and Michelle Grabner, as well as in CURA., C Magazine, BlackFlash, Foam Magazine, esse, and frieze.

Samuele Piazza

Curator, Italy

Samuele Piazza is Chief Curator at OGR Torino. Piazza participated in the Curatorial Program for Research in 2024 as part of CPR: Who Is Being Heard? For OGR he has been responsible for the visual arts program, commissioning and curating solo exhibitions by Mike Nelson, Maria Hassabi, Monica Bonvicini, Nina Canell, and Sarah Sze, as well as group shows including Vogliamo Tutto, Mutating bodies, imploding stars, and Dancing is what we make of falling. He is currently working on Retinal Rivalry, a solo show by Cyprien Gaillard, and on a new publication on the work of P Staff on the occasion of their solo show Full Rotation. Piazza received an MA in Visual Arts from Iuav University in Venice and an MA in Aesthetics from CRMEP, Kingston University London, and was the 2015–16 Helena Rubinstein Fellow of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program.

Talia Smith

Curator, Australia

Talia Smith is an artist and curator from Aotearoa now based in Sydney, Australia. Smith participated in the Curatorial Program for Research in 2024 as part of CPR: Who Is Being Heard? Her curatorial practice focuses on First Nations photographic, moving image, and archival practices, with particular interest in how artists are reclaiming the colonial tool of the camera. She has curated exhibitions for organizations including Primavera at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, the Singapore International Photography Festival, IMA, UTS Gallery, Ballarat Foto Biennale, and Cement Fondu. Her writing has appeared in Memo Review, Art New Zealand, and artist catalogue essays and books; in 2022 she was nominated for Best Art Writing by a New Zealand Māori or Pasifika artist in the AAANZ awards. Smith was chair of Runway Journal from 2017–18 and currently serves on the board at Bus Projects and the editorial committee for Un Projects, alongside research residencies in Singapore and Germany. She currently works as Coordinator of Programming at Blacktown Arts.

Tina Petersone

Curator, Latvia

Tīna Pētersone is an independent curator with an MFA in Curating from Goldsmiths, University of London. Pētersone participated in the Curatorial Program for Research in 2024 as part of CPR: Who Is Being Heard? In 2020, she received the “Young Curator!” prize at the Riga Photography Biennial, and in 2021 she co-founded TUR, where her exhibition program included two shows nominated for the Purvītis Prize. In 2022, she undertook a residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, selected by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia, followed by a residency at the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago. In 2023, she was awarded the Baltic Fellowship to contribute to the Performa Biennial in New York City. Her recent projects include a guest-curator role for ETC. Magazine and an exhibition at Ljubljana Art Weekend showcasing artists from the Baltics to the Balkans, alongside participation in short-term curatorial programs at the Salzburg Summer Academy, Stockholm University of the Arts, the University of Gothenburg, and Lokomotiva Skopje, among others.

All The Nomadic editions