Today, Tuesday, October 8th, was the curator collective What, How & for Whom (WHW) presented as a guest lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Rector Johan Hartle welcomes the collective: “WHW is an internationally outstanding collective that I value very much and with which we have already worked well together. After the impressive work at the Istanbul Biennale 2009 and of course at the Kunsthalle Vienna, we are pleased to WHW Now to work at the academy.” Nataša Ilić and Ivet Ćurlin will, with the support of the Kontakt Collection, realize exhibition projects with students over the next two years.
With the project The secret is that there is no secret want WHW discuss curating as a collaborative effort with students from the academy. “The curatorial training system aims to professionalize the activity. It often reduces curation to a management function within an institutional framework. In response to this, we want to focus on the relationship between power, politics and curatorial means,” say Ivet Ćurlin and Nataša Ilić from WHW.
As part of their teaching assignment, Ilić and Ćurlin will specifically address institutions in Vienna and Austria that have shown artistic practices from Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe (CEE): “We will go beyond the ideological framework of a West-East division and us “Focus on the effects of colonial and imperialist relationships as well as connections between different geographies.” Curatorial projects, developed together with students and realized in the form of exhibitions or other formats, will make previously little-researched levels of exhibition practice visible and provide an analysis of their political effects .
The two-year teaching position at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, supported by the ERSTE Foundation, promotes educational programs that make knowledge about the theory and practice of art in the former Eastern Europe accessible. The support of the ERSTE Foundation is on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the contact collection.
Über What, How & for Whom (WHW)
What, How & for Whom (WHW) is a curator collective founded in Zagreb in 1999 and currently lives between Zagreb and Berlin. WHW’s characteristic curatorial methodology combines exhibition practice, historical research and innovative discursive and media formats. Between 2019 and 2024, three of the collective’s founding members – Ivet Ćurlin, Nataša Ilić and Sabina Sabolović – led the Kunsthalle Wien. In August 2024 they were appointed artistic directors of the Sculpture Projects 2027 in Münster.
