Developing a more sustainable curatorial practice with RMB Latitudes CuratorLab

Essential to the programme is the role of mentorship. Since its inception, CuratorLab, has been driven by Nina Carew, Latitudes’ In-House Curator, and Head of Special Projects and Platform, who’s mentored each CuratorLab participant. In addition to the programme’s outcomes of a planned, conceptualised exhibition for each participant, Carew saw it as imperative to build professional practice resources and frameworks into the residency.   

“I believe CuratorLab offers both skills development within a robust curatorial framework and practical training,” says Carew. Participants were offered weekly sessions to develop core curatorial principles, as well as one-on-one mentorship by established curators in the industry, weekly check-ins with Latitudes curators, and review sessions to critique their exhibition proposals.

“Furthermore, we offered central resources for professional practice which included video and reading material, a handbook on key materials and practice guides to core strategies such as curatorial conception, consignment agreements and budgeting.”

RMB Latitudes Art Fair 2023

The process has yielded a number of accessible and engaging exhibitions that manage to grapple with grand, universal narratives, anchored by personal experiences. These include Visions of Transcendent Corporalities, Translating Home, What Shapes Us? Makes Us? Guides Us?, and Black Existence as Black Resistance among others.

“We can see that emerging curators are grappling with deeply intimate questions related to self-identity and broader questions on the human condition. This may not necessarily be a change or trend, but it does reveal a strong affinity to define, whether that be personally or politically, what it means to be African,” says Carew.

Talya Lubinsky, Marble Dust, 2020, installation, presented by Chelsea Selvan

For 2023, RMB Latitudes CuratorLab participant Denzel “Denzo” Nyathi, whose painting-centric show, Intimate Histories, looked at, among other things, lived experience as a way of engaging with historical and contemporary narratives, the programme was both the impetus for a curatorial journey and a platform that continues to open up opportunity in the realms of curatorial practice. 

RMB Latitudes CuratorLab 2023 participants 

“Curation, as a strictly professional activity, is greatly impacted by decisions made as ‘far away’ as the national treasurer’s office,” says Nyathi. “But the curatorial, as the philosophical underpinnings of curating as we typically understand it, is bound by nothing… there’s a freedom and responsibility in the curatorial to go further.”

For Intimate Histories, Nyathi allowed the concept to be shaped by conversations with artists, using the resultant reflections and experiences as points of departure. “Sounding out my ABCs alongside art advisors, writers, museum professionals, the artists and my cohort of curators was just my ideal kind of learning environment,” says Nyathi.

Still, beyond the production of conceptually rich and engaging exhibitions, there are other markers of success to be considered. Are the shows selling? Are participants leaving the programme better equipped to navigate the industry?

Andre Rose, That I May Hope, 2021, presented by Bontle Tau

Over its two iterations, CuratorLab has garnered close to 600 applications, from which 20 participants have been selected, trained and presented with the platform to curate their own exhibition. This all works out to around 130 artists, and 310 individual artworks exhibited. According to Carew, exhibitions from both the 2021 and 2023 programmes continue to make sales.

For Waterhouse, it’s essential that the platform supports and sustains the artist and the curator. Until the artist has sold, or the curator has successfully put together an exhibition and been paid, the programme hasn’t been successful, she says. “So, it’s about recognising, attracting, nurturing and rewarding artistic talent. Platforms like CuratorLab become vital in that they help develop necessary networks and systems of support for curators.”

Many of the past participants continue to work actively as curators. Since participating in RMB Latitudes CuratorLab 2023, Nyathi has gone on to work with Latitudes again for the RMB Latitudes Art Fair, which later lead to a permanent role in a sales and curatorial capacity. More recently, he’s worked as a curatorial assistant for the Lagos-based gallery 16/16 for FNB Art Joburg.

CuratorLab 2023 participant Denzo Nyathi in conversation at RMB Latitudes Art Fair 

After participating in the 2023 programme, Boitumelo Makousu took her show O Mang, O tswa kae, O ya Kae? to Con Hill as a physical exhibition. Makousu has since gone on to join the Latitudes team as Platform & Production Administrator, as has 2021 participant Chelsea Selvan who, in addition to working towards an upcoming solo exhibition as part of her 2022 Absa L’Atelier win, now heads up Latitudes’ marketing and editorial department.

Further examples of RMB CuratorLab alumni are the ceramic artist Carina Capitine who has subsequently embarked on a residency in Angola through Nesr Art Foundation, and Motheo Mamabolo who’s taken her curatorial skills to the realm of film through the founding of an independent film club.

Tebogo Losaba, Umkhozi, 2022, presented by Motheo Mamabolo

The need to identify and support emerging curators remains. As programmes like RMB CuratorLab endure, the hope is that they’re able to better identify the shifting challenges and possibilities of contemporary curation in Africa, and adapt accordingly. In this way, they will come to serve as a record and a reflection of shifting contemporary curatorial practices.

“...Curating on the continent has entailed institution building – not necessarily driving discussions about art or commissioning artists,” writes Mary Corrigall in a recent article on the relationship between curators and art fairs. “Which is why many African curators tend to leave the continent to pursue careers elsewhere. For those that remain here, they make the best of opportunities that come their way.”

Ideally, through programmes such as RMB CuratorLab, these opportunities will continue to grow, providing curators with the tools, training, and possibility to share their ways of seeing with the continent, the world. As Carew puts it: “In my opinion, the role of a curator on the continent is fundamentally linked to storytelling; in line with the Latin origin ‘curatus’, ‘to care for’ one or another's stories. Now more than ever, there is interest, resource and capacity for Africans to narrate and curate their own stories to a local and global audience.”