Independent Curators International (ICI) supports the work of curators to help create stronger art communities through experimentation, collaboration, and international engagement. Curators are arts community leaders and organizers who champion artistic practice; build essential infrastructures and institutions; and generate public engagement with art. Our collaborative programs connect curators across generations, and across social, political and cultural borders. They form an international framework for sharing knowledge and resources — promoting cultural exchange, access to art, and public awareness for the curator’s role.
Tessa Maria Guazon

Tessa Maria Guazon’s curatorial and research projects centre on urbanization, city spaces, and place making through contemporary art. She has curated exhibitions for institutions, including the section Infinite Time, Proximate Distance for the permanent exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila. Works are on view for her public art project, Lawas (which is body in the vernacular) at the University of the Philippines Diliman campus. She curated Traversals/Trajectories: Expansive localities at the Vargas Museum University of the Philippines in 2017. It showed works by different generations of artists based in the Philippine regions. It was part of the exhibitions and curatorial analysis for the Philippine Contemporary Art Network, a new platform for contemporary art in Manila and the regions. She was co-curator for Tropical Cyclone at the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei Taiwan in 2017. Her exhibition Plying the Seas, Divining the Skies explored ideas of place, loss, and belonging in new media art of Taiwanese artists. Her current projects include the Southeast Asia Neighborhoods Network organised by the Urban Knowledge Network Asia and the International Institute of Asian Studies Leiden, the Netherlands. Her case study on art and gentrification considers the curatorial potentials of research oriented projects. The project is funded by The Henry Luce Foundation New York. She is preparing for an exhibition of women artists from Singapore, Taiwan, and the Philippines this November 2018. She is also co-organizer for WAT Studio, a research and residency space in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. She has received fellowships for research and fieldwork in Southeast Asia and spent time in Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore and Japan. She finished a research residency at the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum Japan in 2017 and is currently working on a book manuscript and an essay on art, locality and resilience.
involved in:
Curatorial Intensive in Manila: Public Symposium
The participants of the Curatorial Intensive in Manila will each present their exhibition and project proposals they have developed throughout the course of the week.
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This November, ICI produces the inaugural Curatorial Intensive in Manila, in collaboration with the Metropolitan Museum of Manila and with the support of the NCCA and the Office of Senator Loren Legarda.
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