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: Curatorial methods exploring marginality, agency and the limen

The arts ecology is full of complex systems, exchanges, and roles. Cultural intermediaries—curators, art historians, museum directors—facilitate opportunities and negotiate the public's perception of the artist, imbuing their role with issues of agency and power (Maguire and Matthews, 2012). If agency is relational, then the responsibility of cultural intermediaries is paramount when representing artists from marginalised positions.

This research project considers an inherent power imbalance in curatorial methodologies implemented by cultural intermediaries that suppress agency by presenting the artist as Other, anchoring their biographical marginality as foreground, and restricting their canonicity through labels like ‘Outsider Art.’ Artists with non-traditional or limited communication modes can lose agentic capacity over their artistic context. This project argues that when an artist's agency is at risk, the responsibility of the cultural intermediary becomes one of advocacy and urgency.

The framework for this project is the concept of a liminal site as a curatorial methodology for cultural intermediaries. Informed by María Lugones’ proposition of the limen as a site of anti-structure released from dominant meanings, it holds the potential for radical approaches to agency and advocacy (2006). The project is further framed by ‘the curatorial’ defined as an encompassing notion, expanding the “space” of care beyond selection/display and considers the ‘extracurricular’— programming, texts, events, workshops—as crucial (Ndikung, 2024). The development of a liminal methodology expands upon existing curatorial strategies that address difference and that are grounded in feminist, decolonial, and disability theory.

An interdisciplinary and practice-based project, it includes conducting interviews and public forums to gain insight from relevant scholars and cultural intermediaries to document emerging strategies and methods. This research is supporting the hypothesis of a liminal methodology that will be further developed through engaging with the practice of Nnena Kalu (b. 1966, Glasgow). 

This project reflects on the positionality of Kalu within the arts ecology shaped by cultural identity politics. It carefully and critically considers how intersectionality and intercommunication relate to subjective agency and autonomy, in order to ask: How can conventional art world curatorial standards be challenged to establish an agentic relational space where artistic and curatorial practices interact on fluid and non-traditional terms? (Lugones 1990)   

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.   

Slominski has been working with Nnena Kalu since 2018 and has 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) in a chapter on abstraction.  

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

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Lugones, M. (2006) 'On Complex Communication', Hypatia, 21(3), pp.75–85. Available at: https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1527-2001.2006.tb01114.x.

Lugones, M. (1990) 'Structure/antistructure and agency under oppression', The Journal of Philosophy, LXXXVII(10), pp.500–507.

Maguire, J.S. and Matthews, J. (2012) 'Are we all cultural intermediaries now? An introduction to cultural intermediaries in context', European Journal of Cultural Studies, 15(5), pp.551–562. Available at: https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1367549412445762.

Ndikung, B.S.B. (2024) 'Detecting / Distilling Care in Curating / the Curatorial', in P. O'Neill, G. van Noord and E. Larison (eds.) Not Going It Alone: Collective Curatorial Curating. apexart, pp. 41–48..