David Ayala-Alfonso is a Colombian curator, artist, and researcher working between Bogotá and London. He was an alum of the New York 2010 Curatorial Intensive, and a recipient of ICI's Dedalus award in 2012. As an independent curator, David has been able to expand the reach of his groundbreaking work through collaboration with ICI; and his advocacy has helped us support our alumni communities.
Ayala-Alfonso curated Never Spoken Again: Rogue Stories of Science and Collections, which was selected from an open call for exhibition proposals from alumni of our Curatorial Intensive. Pioneered with the support of the Hartfield Foundation, the open call aimed at championing the emergent curatorial voices of ICI alumni.
The Curatorial Intensive alumni network played a key role in the exhibition, as well. Never Spoken Again debuted at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, and was organized by Steven Bridges, who has known David Ayala-Alfonso since their participation in the Intensive in 2010.
Never Spoken Again: Rogue Stories of Science and Collections reflects on the birth of modern collections, the art institutions that sustain them and their contingent origin stories. Considering how institutional collections organize our lives, Never Spoken Again brings together artists whose works open up a critique of material culture, iconography, and political ecologies. These practices examine not only the collected objects and the systems of distribution that facilitate their circulation but also the disciplines and subjects of study that they trade in.
During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, ICI’s alumni found community and advocacy in one another. With David’s help, ICI organized a reunion of alumni from some of the early Curatorial Intensive cohorts online. Their meeting led to our Journal series Reports from the Field, which unfolded throughout 2020 and 2021.
Since Never Spoken Again, ICI has offered two more open calls and produced the exhibition Notes for Tomorrow, where 30 alumni curators each selected "one artwork that is important to be seen today."