Research

Lisa is currently a PhD researcher at the Kingston University, School of Art in the Department of Critical and Historical Studies.

Working Project Summary

A Liminal Site: Cultural intermediaries, agency, identity and representation

This practice-based, interdisciplinary research interrogates the power dynamics of agency within the methods employed by cultural intermediaries (curators, critics, dealers) that shape how the identities of marginalised artists are reinforced or resisted. Engaging with the practice of artist Nnena Kalu—a Black woman with a complex learning disability and limited verbal communication—the project examines how agency, identity and representation intersect in existing artworld strategies.  

It considers how the history of Outsider Art, in emphasising biographical Otherness, complicates contemporary identity frameworks when cultural intermediaries lack access to, as in the case of Kalu, an artist’s direct articulation of their practice. It asks: How can the concept of a liminal site challenge art institutional norms and inform a transgressive methodology for representing artists from marginalised positions? Without direct access to the artist’s rationale, when and how can a position of marginalisation be employed as an identity framework?

Drawing on María Lugones’ theory of the limen as a relational threshold space of resistance to dominant meaning, the research proposes a liminal methodology that positions cultural intermediaries coalitionally as radical advocates rather than gatekeepers. The project maps both conventional and emerging strategies through interviews, public forums, and Kalu’s participation in the 2025 Turner Prize as a central case study.

As a cultural intermediary, I am working with Kalu and her supported studio, ActionSpace, to develop, establish and enact a liminal methodology. Grounded in feminist, decolonial, and disability theory, the research interrogates the positionality of artists and expands how difference is mediated. The project contributes new knowledge and methodological innovation by challenging existing paradigms and offering a transferable framework for fostering more equitable and inclusive representation in the arts ecology.

Nnena Kalu

Nnena Kalu is an artist living and working in London. Her practice is rooted in two-dimensional works, sculptures and installations, Kalu binds and wraps materials, exploring space, scale and materiality through repetitive sculptural processes. Solo exhibitions include Nnena Kalu: Creations of Care, Kunsthall Stavanger (2025), Hanging Sculpture 1 to 10, Manifesta 15, Barcelona (2024); Nnena Kalu, Arcadia Missa, London (2024); Infinite Drawing, Deptford X, London, UK (2022); Studio Voltaire elsewhere, London, UK (2020); and Wrapping, Humber Street Gallery, East Yorkshire, UK (2019). Kalu’s works are a part of the Tate Collection (UK), and the Arts Council Collection (UK).  

Kalu’s positionality in the art world, as a woman artist with a complex learning disability and with limited verbal communication, and the implicit challenges this renders is key in navigating this research project. Recent curatorial frameworks for Kalu’s practice have included the concept of care in Kalu’s process for her current solo-exhibition at Kunsthal Stavanger, Norway and her inclusion in the survey exhibition Conversations contextualised her work within the identity framework of Black women and non-binary artists working in Britian today.   

I have been working with Nnena Kalu since 2018 and have curated her work into several shows including Spring Syllabus, J Hammond Projects, London and Kalu’s first exhibition in the United States, Fair Vanity, Summertime, New York in 2020. Slominski also featured Kalu in her book Nonconformers: A New History of Self-Taught Artists (Yale University Press, 2022).

Nnena Kalu has developed her practice at ActionSpace’s studio in Studio Voltaire since 1999.