Xenia Benivolski

Last updated
Xenia Benivolski
Xenia Benivolski 2019.jpg
Born1983
Moscow
NationalityCanadian
Alma mater KU Leuven
Occupations
  • Art curator
  • writer
Years active2008-present

Xenia Benivolski is a curator of contemporary art, sound and music, an art critic and a writer. She founded several collectives and art galleries in Toronto, including The White House, [1] 8-11 gallery [2] The Feminist Art Museum, [3] and SUGAR. Benivolski often lectures about her work. [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] She contributes to e-flux, [10] Artforum [11] Frieze, Texte Zur Kunst and The Wire (magazine) [12]

Curatorial Projects

Benivolski has curated art exhibitions and projects with a focus on sound art, music, instruments and composition, the politics of collectivity, and labour. In 2008, she co-founded The White House Studio Project. The White House was recognized as a valuable space for culture in Toronto by Making Space for Culture, a project led by the City of Toronto. [13] In 2014, Benivolski co-founded 8–11, an art collective and gallery in Toronto's Chinatown. [14] The gallery hosted some of the first exhibitions for artists Azza El Siddique, Tau Lewis, and Lotus L. Kang. In 2016, Benivolski co-founded The Feminist Art Museum with Su-Ying Lee. [15] The goal of the project was to bridge feminist art institutions in North America, and included exhibitions, talks, workshops, and performances. [3] In 2017, Benivolski was one of four international curators at the 7th Beijing International Art Biennale. [16] [17]

Benivolski is the grandniece of Ukrainian revolutionary writer and journalist Mikhail Baitalsky. [18] Her work is informed by her upbringing in Soviet Russia, and her cultural heritage as a Tatar. Benivolski co-founded SUGAR Contemporary in 2019, a contemporary art gallery near Sugar Beach in Toronto. There she curated the inaugural exhibition Pickle Politics by Slavs and Tatars. [19] In 2020, Benivolski curated the first solo exhibition in Canada of work by Latvian-born, Montreal-based artist Zanis Waldheims (1909–93). [20] In 2022 she co-directed the visual art residency The Weapon of Theory as a Conference of Birds at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity with Ayesha Hameed, Jota Mombaça, and Suzanne Kite. In 2024 she received the War Art Fellowship from the National Gallery of Canada. [21]

From 2021-2024 she collaborated with sociologist Max Haiven on Worker as Futurist, a speculative academic project that enlisted rank-and-file amazon workers to write science fiction, which was published in the volume The World After Amazon. The project was widely disseminated in articles in the Jacobin [22] and the Los Angeles Review of Books. [23] Benivolski gave a keynote presentation on the project at Georgia Tech's Space Research Initiative. [24]

She is a curator and editor of the e-flux project You Can't Trust Music, [25] a web-based art and music project that connects artist and musicians through thematic programs featuring Ryuichi Sakamoto, Shiro Takatani, Julieta Aranda, Ayesha Hameed, Felicia Atkinson, Steve Reich, Elin Már Øyen Vister and others. She has been a lecturing professor in art theory at York University, the University of Toronto and OCAD University.

Related Research Articles

Mireille Eagan is a Canadian arts writer and curator.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zdenka Badovinac</span> Slovenian writer, museum director and curator

Zdenka Badovinac is a curator and writer, was the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, Croatia. She served between 1993 and 2021 as director of the Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana, comprised since 2011 of two locations: the Museum of Modern Art and the Metelkova Museum of Contemporary Art in Metelkova, an autonomous art, culture, and social center in Ljubljana. In 2022, she was appointed director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb. She resigned from her position in the fall of 2023 for personal reasons. She returned to Ljubljana, where she currently works as an independent curator, author and international consultant.

Shary Boyle is a contemporary Canadian visual artist working in the mediums of sculpture, drawing, painting and performance art. She lives and works in Toronto.

Massimiliano Gioni is an Italian curator and contemporary art critic based in New York City, and artistic director at the New Museum. He is the artistic director of the Nicola Trussardi Foundation in Milan as well as the artistic director of the Beatrice Trussardi Foundation. Gioni was the curator of the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013.

Liu Ding is a Chinese artist and curator based in Beijing. Liu’s artistic practices range from installation, painting, photography, and theatre set design and production, whereas his professional skills vary from magazine editorial, television production, and curatorial work.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Catherine de Zegher</span> Belgian curator, art critic, and art historian

Catherine de Zegher is a Belgian curator and a modern and contemporary art historian. She has a degree in art history and archaeology from the University of Ghent.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Athens Biennale</span> Exhibition of international contemporary art

The Athens Biennale is an international cultural event held every two years at various locations in Athens, consisting of a large-scale exhibition and a diverse programme of side events, such as performances, workshops, lectures etc. It is one of the largest international art events of contemporary culture in Greece and it has been acknowledged as one of the most significant and innovative cultural initiatives in Europe by the European Cultural Foundation.

Angela Washko is an American new media artist and facilitator based in New York. After nine years as a professor of art at Carnegie Mellon University, she is currently the Catherine B. Heller Collegiate Professor of Art at University of Michigan. Washko mobilizes communities and creates new forums for discussions of feminism where they do not exist.

e-flux is a publishing platform and archive, artist project, curatorial platform, and e-mail service founded in 1998. The arts news digests, events, exhibitions, schools, journal, books, and art projects produced and/or disseminated by e-flux describe strains of critical discourse surrounding contemporary art, culture, and theory internationally. Its monthly publication, e-flux journal, has produced essays commissioned since 2008 about cultural, political, and structural paradigms that inform contemporary artistic production.

Maia Damianovic is a British American writer of art critical texts, magazine articles, exhibition catalogs, artist monograms and art reviews.

Defne Ayas is a curator, lecturer, and editor in the field of contemporary art and its institutions. Ayas directed, cofounded, curated, and advised several art institutes, initiatives, and exhibition platforms across the globe, including in the United States, Netherlands, China and Hong Kong, South Korea, Russia, Lithuania, and Italy. Exploring art's role within social and political processes, Ayas is best known for conceiving inventive exhibition and biennale formats within diverse geographies, in each instance composing interdisciplinary frameworks that provide historical anchoring and engagement with local conditions. Working between Berlin and New York since 2018, she currently serves as Senior Program Advisor and Curator at Large at Performa. Until June 2021, Ayas was the artistic director of the 2021 Gwangju Biennale, together with Natasha Ginwala.

Jonathan Shaughnessy is a Canadian curator in the field of contemporary art. In 2022, he was made Director, Curatorial Initiatives at the National Gallery of Canada. He is also an adjunct professor with the Department of Visual Arts at University of Ottawa.


Anne Barlow is a curator and director in the field of international contemporary art, and is currently Director of Tate St Ives, Art Fund Museum of the Year 2018. There she directs and oversees the artistic vision and programme, including temporary exhibitions, collection displays, artist residencies, new commissions, and a learning and research programme. At Tate St Ives, Barlow has curated solo exhibitions of work by artists including: Outi Pieski (2024); Hera Büyüktaşcıyan (2023); Burçak Bingöl (2022); Prabhakar Pachpute (2022); Thảo Nguyên Phan (2022); Petrit Halilaj (2021); Haegue Yang (2020); Otobong Nkanga (2019); Huguette Caland (2019); Amie Siegel (2018) and Rana Begum (2018). She was also co-curator of "Naum Gabo: Constructions for Real Life" (2020) and collaborating curator with Castello di Rivoli, Turin for Anna Boghiguian at Tate St Ives (2019).

Elke Krasny is a cultural and architectural theorist, urban researcher, curator, and author. Her work specializes in architecture, contemporary art, urbanism, feminist museology, histories and theories of curating, critical historiographies of feminism, politics of remembrance, and their intersections. Krasny received her Ph.D. from the University of Reading. She is Professor of Art and Education at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. She worked as a visiting professor at the University of Bremen and the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg. In 2012 she was visiting scholar at the Canadian Centre for Architecture CCA, Montréal. In 2014, she was City of Vienna Visiting Professor at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Urban Culture and Public Space (SKuOR) at the Vienna University of Technology. Using the framework of political care ethic developed by Joan Tronto, Krasny works on developing a perspective of critical care for architectural and urban practice and theory. In 2019, together with Angelika Fitz she edited Critical Care. Architecture and Urbanism for a Broken Planet.

Adrienne Edwards is a New York–based art curator, scholar, and writer. Edwards is currently the Engell Speyer Family Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Stefanie Hessler is a German-born contemporary art curator, an art writer, and the current director of Swiss Institute in New York. From 2019 to 2022 she was the director of Kunsthall Trondheim in Trondheim, Norway.

Scott Watson is a Canadian curator, writer, and researcher based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Watson was the Director/Curator of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at the University of British Columbia from 1995 to 2021. As faculty in the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at the University of British Columbia, he helped initiate the Critical Curatorial Studies program at UBC in September 2002. Through his research and publications, he has acted as a champion of contemporary Vancouver artists.

Xiaoyu Weng (翁笑雨) is a Chinese curator, writer, editor and educator in the area of contemporary art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elena Sorokina</span> Writer, curator and art historian

Elena Sorokina is a curator, art historian and writer. She was part of the curatorial team for documenta 14 (2017) and co-curator of the Armenian Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale (2022). She served as chief curator of the HISK Higher Institute of Fine Arts, Belgium in 2017–2019. As independent curator, Sorokina has organised projects at BOZAR Centre for Fine Arts, Art Brussels, and WIELS, Brussels; Centre Pompidou and Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; SMBA Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Rudolfinum, Prague; and Pera Museum, Istanbul, among others.

Jessica Bradley has served as a curator for Contemporary art at the National Gallery of Canada (1979-1987) and the Art Gallery of Ontario, organizing many exhibitions in a broad range of Canadian and international art. She was known as a tastemaker in her institutional roles and later, as a gallerist.

References

  1. ↑ Titanic, Sara (2010-01-01). "The White House". NOW Magazine. Retrieved 2021-03-11.
  2. ↑ https://8eleven.org/
  3. 1 2 "Feminist Art Museum". Temporary Art Review. 2017-11-22. Retrieved 2021-03-11.
  4. ↑ CCS Bard Lecture Series
  5. ↑ https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/preemptive-listening-day-three
  6. ↑ https://tiff.net/events/tokyo-melody-a-film-about-ryuichi-sakamoto-with-xenia-benivolski
  7. ↑ "Do Rocks Listen". AGYU. Retrieved 2022-09-24.
  8. ↑ https://oca.no/programme/public-talk-with-curator-xenia-benivolski
  9. ↑ https://artisnaples.org/events/museum-lecture.2425.1207.2
  10. ↑ https://www.e-flux.com/journal/115/374619/you-can-t-trust-music/
  11. ↑ "Xenia Benivolski on Artforum". Artforum. Retrieved 2022-09-24.
  12. ↑ "Xenia Benivolski on Raven Chacon". the Wire. Retrieved 2022-09-24.
  13. ↑ City of Toronto. "Making Space for Culture" (PDF). toronto.ca. Retrieved March 17, 2021.
  14. ↑ "6 New Toronto Art Spaces to Watch". canadianart.ca. Retrieved 2021-03-29.
  15. ↑ "Quick Fire: 5 Questions with Feminist Art Museum". Gardiner Museum. 2017-08-16. Retrieved 2021-03-21.
  16. ↑ The Organizing Committee of Beijing International Art Biennale (2016). "Regulations of the 7th Beijing International Art Biennale, China 2017". www.aiap-iaa.org.
  17. ↑ "the 7th Beijing International Art Biennale：The Silk Road and World Civilizations". e.cflac.org.cn. Retrieved 2021-03-25.
  18. ↑ https://www.historicalmaterialism.org/book-series/notebooks-for-the-grandchildren-recollections-of-a-supporter-of-the-marxist-opposition-to-stalin-who-survived-the-stalin-terror/
  19. ↑ Polina, Lasenko (2019). "Pickle Politics: Review" (PDF). www.sfu.ca. Retrieved March 25, 2021.
  20. ↑ "Zanis Waldheims – Canadian Art". canadianart.ca. Retrieved 2021-03-28.
  21. ↑ https://www.beaux-arts.ca/node/322171
  22. ↑ https://jacobin.com/2023/09/amazon-workers-sci-fi-writing-bezos-imagination-speculative-future/
  23. ↑ ttps://lareviewofbooks.org/article/is-amazon-the-borg-we-asked-their-workers/
  24. ↑ https://calendar.gatech.edu/event/2024/04/04/challenges-and-ethics-space-exploration-0
  25. ↑ "yctm.e-flux.com".
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.