Category: Natasha Becker

Natasha Becker

Natasha Becker was born in South Africa and has spent the last sixteen years living and working between New York and Cape Town. An expert in contemporary African and African American art, she has curated a number of exhibitions in collaboration with artists, curators, collectors, galleries, museums, and foundations internationally. She recently co-curated two exhibitions, “Perilous Bodies,” and “Radical Love,” at the distinguished Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice to inaugurate their new art gallery in New York (2019). Her past experience includes curating exhibitions at the Goodman Gallery (South Africa), convening public programs in global art history at the Clark Art Institute, and launching an international video art festival (both Massachusetts, USA). Natasha is one of the co-founders of two collaborative curatorial platforms, ASSEMBLY ROOM (New York) and THE UNDERLINE SHOW (Johannesburg) and was appointed inaugural curator of African art at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in December 2020.

CREATIVE DIALOGUE

Art on our Mind Creative Dialogue with South African Curator Natasha Becker and Sharlene Khan on 5 September 2019 at The Point of Order. The event was part of the African Feminisms (Afems) conference 2019: Theorising from the Epicentres of our Agency, at the Wits School of the Arts, Wits University, Johannesburg, South Africa.

 

AUDIO: Art on our Mind Creative Dialogue with Natasha Becker

TRANSCRIPT: Art on our Mind Creative Dialogue with Natasha Becker

Find Natasha Becker on Instagram


Assembly Room New York invited curators to speak about curating in the time of COVID19, watch episode #1 with Natasha Becker online:

 
 
 
 
 
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Curating at the time of COVID19 is a series of short, homemade videos, by our fellow independent women curators, discussing curating practices during the lockdown.😷 . We are committed to continuing our mission to create community and to support the work of independent women curators by sharing our stories, our work, and our inspiration in these challenging times. We invite you to enjoy our new online content created by our community of awesome women! Topics include; What does an independent curator do? What do curators think of online exhibitions? What artists, artworks, and exhibitions are curators working on or inspired by? . Our guest for the first episode is Natasha Becker, the co-founder curator of Assembly Room.🎊🎉🎊 . Bio: Natasha was born in South Africa and has spent the last sixteen years living and working between Cape Town and New York. An expert in contemporary African and African American art, she has curated a number of exhibitions in collaboration with artists, curators, collectors, galleries, museums, and foundations in South Africa and the United States. She recently co-curated two exhibitions, “Perilous Bodies,” and “Radical Love,” at the distinguished Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice to inaugurate their new art gallery in New York (2019). Her experience includes curating exhibitions at the Goodman Gallery (South Africa), organizing public programs in global art history at the Clark Art Institute, and launching an international video art festival (both Massachusetts, USA). . More to come. Stay tuned!📡📡📡

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ARCHIVAL RESOURCES: Natasha Becker

WORKS by Natasha Becker
CURATORIAL WORK
WRITING

PRESS AND REVIEWS on Natasha Becker
PRESS AND REVIEWS

Curator’s website and CV

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WORKS: Natasha Becker – Writing

Texts by Natasha Becker

MA Thesis

Becker, N. (2002) Inside and Outside the Family Album. Making, exhibiting and archiving the photograph in the South African National Gallery and the National Library of South Africa. Univerity of the Western Cape, available at:
http://hdl.handle.net/11394/6046

One of the first things that reached me about photography was how a photograph tells a story or stories. This experience is perhaps most common when viewing personal photographs. A few years ago I was looking through a vast number of personal photographs, of a family I knew well, and was struck by how all the photographs (in albums, framed or lying loosely about) were part of a particular family narrative. Even without the storytelling, which accompanied my viewing of the photographs, I could still ‘read’ bits and pieces of the family history (and the broader social, political and cultural histories) in their photographs.

Journal articles and essays

2021 (forthcoming) ‘In the Wake of Okwui Enwezor’. NKA: Journal for Contemporary African Art. Special Issue on Curator Okwui Enwezor.

March 2020 ‘To Imagine a Future World’. Curatorial Essay, exhibition catalogue, Present Passing, Osage Art Foundation, Hong Kong, China
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February 2020 ‘Forever if Composed of Nows’ Curatorial Essay, exhibition catalogue , A.I.R gallery, New York, NY
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February 2020 ‘Pushing Through a Public Memorial’. Guest Contributor, Brooklyn Rail Critics Page, New York, NY
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November 2019 ‘Where Does My Heart Reside?’ Guest Contributor, Brooklyn Rail Critics Page, New York, NY
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May 2019 ‘An Ode to Love’ Curatorial Essay, Ford Foundation Art Gallery, New York, NY
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October 2015 ‘Encountering Virginia Chihota’ Exhibition catalogue essay, Tiwani Contemporary: Virginia Chihota. A Thorn In My Flesh (munzwa munyama yangu)

2008 ‘Primitivism revisited: After the end of an idea’. African Arts, 41:1, 86-88, available online at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20447874 [download pdf here]

2001 ‘The “Lives of Colour” Exhibition. South African National Gallery, September 1999’ Kronos 27 Visual History, 270-291 available online at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41056681 [download pdf here]

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WORKS: Natasha Becker – Curatorial Work

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

2019

RADICAL LOVE
Group Show, Ford Foundation for Social Justice Art Gallery, New York, NY
https://news.artnet.com/exhibitions/ford-foundation-gallery-radical-love-1612009

PERILOUS BODIES
Group Show, Ford Foundation for Social Justice Art Gallery, New York, NY
https://afropunk.com/2019/02/art-exhibit-curators-of-color-utopianimaginationper- ilous-bodies-ford-foundation/

INTERIOR LANDSCAPES
Group Show, Assembly Room, New York, NY
http://assemblyroom.nyc/current-exhibtion/

2018

MULTIPLICITIES
Group Show, Assembly Room, New York, NY
https://hyperallergic.com/468273/assembly-room-curatorial-collective/

WHAT CAN BE SEEN
Group Show, Spring/Break Art Show, New York, NY
https://www.contemporaryand.com/magazines/the-collective-unearthingcensored- scenes-from-postwar-italian-cinema/

2017

DIALOGUES IN DRAWING
Group Show, Jenkins Johnson Gallery, San Francisco, CA
https://www.artsy.net/show/jenkins-johnson-gallery-dialogues-in-drawing#

AMERICANAH
Group Show, Spring/Break Art Show, New York, NY
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-16-curators-watch-springbreak

WEIGHTS & MEASURES
Solo Show and Civic Dialogues, Constitution Hill Museum, Johannesburg, South Africa
https://www.contemporaryand.com/magazines/justice-under-the-spotlight/

2016

SHIRIN NESHAT: DREAMERS
Solo Show, Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa,
http://www.goodman-gallery.com/exhibitions/624

SUE WILLIAMSON: THE PAST LIES AHEAD
Solo Show, Goodman Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
http://www.goodman-gallery.com/exhibitions/611

2015

RUBY AMANZE ONYINYECHI: SALT WATER
Solo Show, Goodman Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
http://www.goodman-gallery.com/exhibitions/590

EDGE OF SILENCE
Group Show, Goodman Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
http://www.goodman-gallery.com/exhibitions/573

SPEAKING BACK
Group Show, Goodman Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
http://www.goodman-gallery.com/exhibitions/559

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