Coimbra Session

Can contemporary art and artists be catalysts for change on different scales - personal, collective, structural?

Zoé Whitley, Director of Chisenhale Gallery, poses a question charged with symbolism,

Can contemporary art and artists change the world we live in? Can these dialogues and reflections ignite changes at a variety of scales - personal, collective, structural?

Dr Zoé Whitley is Director of Chisenhale Gallery in London, UK whose recent programme includes new commissions by Rindon Johnson and Rachel Jones. Exhibitions to her credit include co-curating Elijah Pierce's America (Barnes Foundation, 2020), curating the British Pavilion (Venice Biennale 2019) and co-curating the award-winning international touring exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power. She writes widely on contemporary artists, most recently on Suki Seokyoung Kang, Kehinde Wiley, and Faith Ringgold. Zoé is a trustee of Creative Access and Decolonising Arts Institute. She serves on the 2020-22 Arts Council Collection Committee and the Mayor's Commission on Diversity in the Public Realm. Her prior roles include Senior Curator (Hayward Gallery); Curator, International Art (Tate Modern) and Curator of Contemporary Programmes (V&A).

Mónica de Miranda lives and works in Lisbon and Luanda. Mónica is an Angolan/ Portuguese visual artist, photographer, filmmaker, and researcher who works on postcolonial issues of geography and history. De Miranda's work is research-based and looks at the convergence of politics, gender, memory and space. Her works typically consist of video, photography and installation and  in its expanded forms and on the boundaries between fiction and documentary. She holds a Visual Arts Degree from the Camberwell College of Arts (London, 1998), a Master’s Degree in Art and Education from the Institute of Education (London, 2000) and a PhD in Visual Art from the University of Middlesex (London, 2014). Mónica is also one of the founders of the artistic residencies project Triangle Network in Portugal and she founded in 2014 the project Hangar – Center for Artistic Research, in Lisbon. In 2019 she was nominated for EDP Prize in Maat Museum (Lisbon, Portugal) and in  2016 she was nominated for Novo Banco Photo Prize and exhibited at Museu Coleção Berardo (Lisbon, Portugal) as a finalist. Mónica was also nominated for Prix Pictet Photo Award in the same year. Mónica de Miranda has participated in various residencies in institutions such as the Tate Britain, French Institute, British Council/Iniva. Her work is present in public collections like the MAAT, Ministery of Culture of Portugal, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea do Chiado and Arquivo Municipal de Lisboa.