"Curating Contemporary Art" Seminar Program
Seminar: Dead Can Dance: Afterlife of Art
Speaker: Mari Spirito
Time: 6:00-7:30 pm
Immersed in the terminal phase of an inescapable cycle, how does art reconstitute itself in the wake of its own collapse? How might the function of art be stretched and repurposed so that the core of human creativity emerges into an afterlife with expanded utility? Art, like love, assumes countless forms and serves different purposes at different moments in our lives, shaped by the demands of its time and place. Within the commissioning and curatorial process, there are many ways to support artists in creating artworks and exhibitions that run parallel to life itself. This presentation reflects on fifteen years of Protocinema exhibitions, alongside a proposal in-progress titled Dead Can Dance: Afterlife of Art which considers the everyday practice of mutual exchange and sustaining one another, and the ways that the living and the dead coexist. In exploring shared human experiences that connect us across cultures, few realities are as universal as the weight of loss and the inevitability of dying and natural flow of impermanence.
About Mari Spirito
Mari Spirito is Director and Curator of Protocinema, a trans-regional arts organization based in New York with international operations, founded in 2011 which explores shared human experiences uniting all of us. Spirito curated The Substance With Which The Future Is Made, inaugural 6-month public video art program, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai, 2025. She runs Protocinema’s Emerging Curator Series mentorship program, launched in 2015, and is faculty, AfterSchool Special, RISD Rhode Island School of Design from 2023. Spirito’s practice is guided by a vested interest in ingenuity and resourcefulness, in 2020 and 2021, she innovated a group exhibition across multiple cities titled A Few in Many Places featuring artists’ neighborhood interventions in Philadelphia, Beirut, Berlin, Bangkok, Seoul and Istanbul. She curated Art Basel’s Conversations program from 2013 to 2018, and was director, 303 Gallery, 2000-2012. In 2023-24, she curated The Myth of Normal, a Celebration of Authentic Expression, Massart Museum, Boston, served Jury for Member, Mamut Art Project, Istanbul 2025; Advisor, 2nd Mardin Biennial, Turkey, 2012; currently is Vice President, Board of Trustees of Participant Inc; Board of Directors, ArteEast, New York and Advisory Committee of The Joan and Martin Goldfarb Gallery York University, Toronto.
* This seminar is organized in collaboration between Akbank Sanat and Open Dialogue Istanbul
* To learn conditions of participation in a single seminar, we would kindly ask you to send an e-mail to apply@curatingcontemporaryart.org address noting the required seminar details. Single seminar participation fee is 850 TL for adults, 650 TL for students (VAT included).
* The program will take place on the online platform Zoom.