Past Residents Annie Jael Kwan
Annie Jael Kwan is an independent curator, researcher and educator based in London. She founded the curatorial initiative Something Human to explore the critical ideas surrounding movement across borders, including the 2017 M.A.P. project that launched the Southeast Asian Performance Collection as a resource of performance art materials from Southeast Asia. She co-leads Asia-Art-Activism, an experimental research and knowledge-sharing network in residence at Raven Row till June 2019. She is currently investigating radical futures (feminist, indigenous and island identities, biotech and new technologies.
The residency is realised in context of HICP – Helsinki International Curatorial Programme, a collaboration between Frame Contemporary Art Finland and HIAP.
I am keen to connect with the Helsinki network of artists, research groups and institutions via studio visits, conversations and archival research. I aim to explore how alternative or indigenous knowledge and the experimental frontiers of biotech science have been utilised in different artistic activities and approaches that seek to recalibrate our conditioned praxis in an age of interpersonal and planetary toxicity. Alongside getting to know and experience a different art-making context, I would also welcome the opportunity to consider new strategies for sustainable and radical and self-reflexive practice.