Curating Tools with Tšhegofatšo Mabaso: How to Work with Collections Collaboratively

How can curators work with collections collaboratively? Which methodologies have the potential to increase museums’ transparency? Is collecting necessary for institutions? What are living archives? 

Listen to the free version of this episode on Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, or Apple podcasts.

CFC members can access an exclusive extended version of this episode at the end of this post.

About this episode

Join us in this inspiring episode with an artist and curator Tšhegofatšo Mabaso. Explore the context of working with collections and archives, uncover new modes of working within an institutional context and understand the importance of questioning the status quo. 

​​Find out what’s in store at the Rethinking Art Collections and Archives course Node Center for Curatorial Studies and learn how to creatively reshape historic archives through curatorial practices.

This podcast is brought to you by Call for Curators, providing professional art opportunities since 2012, and Node Center for Curatorial Studies, the pioneering e-learning platform for curators and art professionals founded in 2009. 

About our guest

Tšhegofatšo Mabaso is an artist, curator, and researcher based in Cape Town, South Africa. In her practice, she is interested in experimental approaches to knowledge production, exploring new curatorial methods and imagining new forms, whether for exhibitions, collections or institutions. 

Collaboration influences her thinking, drawing on the wealth of knowledge and approaches collectives have offered us historically. Her current research looks to what queerness as a mode of being in the world offers and incites a critical and generative space for knowledge production and possibilities of radical futures. 

Notable recent projects include: Territories Between Us, Iziko SANG (2021); it is a gathering of the elders with George Hallett, Michaelis Gallery (2022); – and counting (2019) Johannesburg Art Gallery.

Meet our host

Our host ⁠Maria Cynkier⁠ is an independent curator and researcher working in the fields of art, ecology and digital culture. In her practice, she is concerned with the social, political and material impacts of new technologies on humans, non-humans and the environment. She often works within the framework of speculative storytelling and worldbuilding tactics that enable critical dialogue.

Listen to the extended CFC Members’ version: