Announcing the 2024 Curatorial Research Fellows

Apr 18, 2024

ICI is thrilled to announce the 2024 cohort of Curatorial Research Fellows: Eduardo Carrera, Dean Daderko, Jason Garcia, and Irlando Ferreira!

232 curators across 38 countries and 27 states, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico submitted applications for four Fellowship opportunities: Curatorial Research Fellowships for curators of African descent based anywhere in the world and for BIPOC curators based in the United States, both under the Marian Goodman Gallery Initiative in honor of the late Okwui Enwezor; the Indigenous Curatorial Research Fellowship; and the Mississippi River Basin Curatorial Research Fellowship.

ICI’s Curatorial Research Fellowships program reflects the organization’s commitment to the advancement of new knowledge and practices. The program supports curators’ research, travel, and the development of their professional networks, promoting experimentation, collaboration, and international engagement in the field. Conceived to foster independent research, the Fellowships offer a framework tailored to each curator’s field of critical inquiry: Fellows receive mentorship specific to their research interests, as well as $10,000 in financial support. They also have access to ICI’s international networks of collaborators and programs to create opportunities for continued learning.

This year, we are delighted to work with and support the practices of these four curators, whose timely and innovative projects are pushing the curatorial field forward.

Meet the Fellows:

Eduardo Carrera (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania): Eduardo Carrera’s research explores LGBTQ+ BIPOC representation and resistance in queer photography from the southern United States, a region intricately linked to Latin America and the Caribbean due to its territorial and cultural proximity. Informed by a selection of work by artists active in the 1970s-80s, through to today – including George Febres, George Dureau, and Judy Cooper, alongside contemporary photographers like Trenity Thomas and Tommy Kha – his Fellowship project examines queer BIPOC experiences and depictions during the HIV/AIDS crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. Tracing histories of photography alongside developments in queer culture throughout the American South, Eduardo will mine archives and museum collections. Additionally, he will conduct interviews with curators in order to better understand the integration of queer photography into broader museological narratives of American art history.

Learn more about Eduardo and his project.

Dean Daderko (St. Louis, Missouri): Through deep engagement with the Mississippi River, Dean Daderko seeks to draw literal and metaphoric connections by exploring the cultural and ecological interconnectedness of sites and beings linked by the River and its tributaries. Following their recent arrival in St. Louis, and in a leadership role at a regional institution, Dean will follow the River as a method of research, connecting with cultural producers in places like Des Moines, Memphis, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Oklahoma City, Omaha, and beyond, establishing collaborations and building an ecologically-minded relationship among creatives. Their research will inform an upcoming exhibition at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis.

Learn more about Dean and their project.

Jason Garcia (Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico): Jason Garcia’s (Okuu Pín/Turtle Mountain) project seeks to raise awareness of Tewa art, culture, and relationship to land through critical engagement with Georgia O’Keeffe’s work and museum, which have long defined the popular imaginary of northern New Mexico and contributed to the erasure of Tewa perspectives. Questioning the Tewa absence from this conception of the landscape and the broader settler colonial context of northern New Mexico, Garcia will bring together a group of Indigenous artists, scholars, and community members to co-curate an exhibition that honors historical and contemporary Tewa contributions to the land and culture of the region. The project comes at a critical time for the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, which is currently planning for a new campus that will center Indigenous perspectives; participants in the project will spend time with the Museum’s collections and in O’Keeffe’s homes and studios, engaging in collective research and exchange.

Learn more about Jason and his project.

Irlando Ferreira (Mindelo, Cabo Verde): Irlando Ferreira’s research seeks to analyze and document the role of visual art in shaping and affirming the cultural identity of post-independence Cabo Verde; as independence leader Amílcar Cabral wrote, "The liberation struggle is first and foremost an act of culture." Focusing on three artists—Manuel Figueira, Luísa Queirós and Bela Duarte, who together formed Cooperativa Resistência or The Collective Resistance—the project will uncover how these creatives’ work to research, preserve, and revitalize Cabo Verdean popular culture in the 1970s laid the foundation for a new aesthetic and political reality in the country. Deeply rooted in Cabo Verde’s complex history as a Portuguese colony and center of the transatlantic slave trade, Irlando’s research will also tie Cabo Verdean narratives to broader discussions across the African continent and Global South.

Learn more about Irlando and his project.