Sofía Olascoaga works in the intersections between art and education by activating spaces for critical thinking and collective action. Olascoaga was a Curatorial Fellow at the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program in 2010 and prior to that received her BFA from La Esmeralda National School of Fine Arts in Mexico City. From 2007 to 2010, Olascoaga was Head of Education and Public Programs at Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil in Mexico City, where she founded Estudio Abierto, an interdisciplinary programming platform that challenges event formats and museum’s relationship to its communities. She was educational advisor and public program manager for the first grant initiative Bancomer-MACG Program for Young Artists in 2008-2010.
Olascoaga’s curatorial projects include sustained collaborations with educational initiatives such as Art21 (NY) and with a range of universities in Mexico; as well as En Conjunto: ¿Grupos, Colectivos o Colaboraciones? (Working Together: On groups, collectives and collaborations) in 2006, on a series of think-tanks and a subsequent publication on collective artistic practice featuring over 25 Mexican artists’ collectives from the 1970s to the date. She is a recipient of the Mexican National Arts and Culture Fund Grant for Young Artists FONCA (2010).
ICI presents a panel discussion on the discursive turn in curating at CAA’s 100th annual conference in Los Angeles.
This DISPATCH addresses the case of a growing scene at the intersection of education, pedagogy and art in Mexico.
At this particular time there seems to be a collective, urgent demand for alternative strategies that provide new relationships of knowledge production and spaces for dialogue and encounter.
In recent years, artist-led, self-organized, institutional and private educational initiatives in the contemporary art scene have opened up an active debate on the intersections of education and art. A number of artist-instigated educational projects have emerged, many of which are independently staged, while others are institutionally framed, and some privately funded.
Within the contemporary art circuit, through many differences regarding perspectives, positions and objectives, universities, museums, and independent spaces in Mexico openly address questions and activate speculation on the relationship between education and art.
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