Linda Rocco is a London-based contemporary art curator and PhD candidate at the Royal College of Art with a LAHP/AHRC doctoral award. She has curated public programmes, exhibitions and residencies internationally, with established organisations such as Delfina Foundation and Goethe Institut London, and in the public sphere for the Mayor of London. Linda recently curated and creatively produced Liberty Festival 2022 for The Greater London Authority (GLA), securing and delivering a public commission by Yinka Shonibare CBE.

She also recently collaborated with international bodies including the Danish Art Foundation, Baan Noorg Collaborative Thailand, and national organisations including Frieze London, Laure Genillard Gallery, Cambridge Junction, Metal, UK Antarctic Heritage Trust, Arts Council England.

Trained as an Art Historian with a background in the Performing Arts, Linda's work has been responsive to new media developments since working for the Link Center for the Arts of the Information Age in 2014. She has since co-curated digital programmes in partnership with the Ministry of Culture Taiwan, Jatiwangi Art Factory, Pineapple Lab. - Philippines, Yinka Shonibare Foundation, Bagri Foundation and The Genesis Foundation.

Her practice-based research investigates alternative economies of art and ecologies of practice which recognise immaterial labour and pluralistic values in cooperative and distributed ways; participatory, performative and intermedia practices; sociotechnical imaginaries and transdisciplinary collaboration, particularly with STEM subjects.

Linda regularly works as curator for artists and private galleries, as well as consulting for charities, foundations and public institutions on accessible and socially-engaged projects. She also gives talks and mentors artists and organisations wanting to expand their work towards new viable futures.

---

Why did you become a curator, were you interested in a specific topic and why?

I trained as an art historian following an illness that prevented me from continuing a career as a performer. I was then eager to work hands-on with contemporaneity and moved to the UK to undertake an MA in Curating Contemporary Art. What drew me to curate was the desire to work with living artists and make things happen in unusual circumstances to ultimately engage new publics, particularly those unfamiliar with the contemporary art scene. After a life as a young performer, becoming a curator was my opportunity to reinvent a new life off-stage, which gave me distinctive motivation and resilience. I swiftly became passionate about the politics of the curatorial and the complexities coming from the production, display, and distribution of art, growing an intellectual and critical perspective on this position of privilege whilst striving to open up new spaces of possibilities.

Have you ever perceived the danger of false inclusion and tokenisation within the art system, where institutions should be at the forefront of inclusivity?

Yes. I agree cultural institutions should be at the forefront of inclusive behaviours. Yet numerous institutions, particularly mainstream ones that hold the monopoly of artistic careers, seem to lack the structural capabilities to keep up with the shifting demands of 21st-century societies. In this scenario, we often witness institutions that are inflexible and increasingly removed from the needs of their workers. Having collaborated with and commissioned many D/deaf, disabled or neurodivergent artists, I often see rhetorics of inclusivity used as tick-boxes to please funding bodies. There is still much work to do around forging practices of radical care within institutional settings to allow those from marginalised backgrounds to access opportunities. These issues are not resolved with a one-off grant but with internal audits and sustained commitment and support.

Have you ever experienced tokenisation of identities/certain groups as a problem in your practice? Have you questioned that?

My commitment to working ethically, with care and deep awareness, is essential to my practice. As a freelancer, I make sure to get well-informed about the people or organisations I work with before accepting a job. Yet sometimes, I've found myself in positions where I felt I was being tokenised and/or the artists I worked with. I believe instrumentalisation happens rather frequently in the arts, as we have to validate the relevance of our work to the outside world that often perceives artistic work as a side occupation and not seriously enough. Instrumentalisation also occurs when artists or curators (both in organisations and freelancers) are bestowed with unrealistic or glorified ideals about the social impact of their project. I'm referring particularly to funding bodies that demand the filling of evaluation models using metrics that flatten the many values at play to mere numbers, reducing the vastness of artistic work to short-term tangible outcomes or value for money. I've also experienced gross mismatches between institutions publishing intents of inclusivity and diversity versus the actual work that the organisation put in place towards achieving those. Despite all this, there are of course exceptions, with some private and public organisations doing critical work out there that challenges assumptions and stereotypes. It is extremely complex to implement radical change in a sector that is structurally and historically problematic.
Did you develop any organisational or curatorial tactics to overcome this problem and really support the communities that were important to you and your programmes?

When working with others, I prioritise the people I'm working with, ensuring that the artists know that I'm there for them while striving to generate a safe space for dialogue and confrontation across roles and disciplines. I check in regularly and always think about who is not present, striving to bring those voices into the conversation. I think deeply about audiences and the publics I aim to reach through the work. In my experience, doing events that are 'for everyone' never attracts minority groups or communities. It is essential to target and speak to the communities you want to engage and not just assume they will participate because, for example, your event has access provisions in place. The project-based nature of freelance work does not allow sustained support, and I'm increasingly thinking about precarity, the lack of longevity and long-term mutual commitment derived from such working methods.

What might feminist and queer curating mean to you?

As I read the question, I think about notions of curatorial ethics. Curating as caring, and the labour needed in caring beyond objects in a much broader social, cultural, affective and emotional sense. I think about vulnerability and the reliability required in caring practices. I also think about commitment to social and ecological justice.



COMMITMENT  CURATORIAL  ETHICS  RADICALCARE