Thomas Cury

My curatorial practice is rooted in collaborative methodologies that aim to redistribute knowledge and power. As a curator, I seek to hold space for difference while also attempting to facilitate consensus-based decision-making processes which actively incorporate the perspectives of all involved. Guided by my experience in community organising, I am dedicated to opening up the curatorial as a space in which to critically reflect and address interlocking forms of oppression that structure our world. Decolonial thinking shapes and grounds my practice, as I constantly seek to question and challenge Eurocentric curatorial norms which are embedded in many institutional settings. However, I acknowledge, as activist group Strike MoMA put it, that “no one is pure in a colonised world”– as such, I always try to be aware of the ways in which I am implicated in the very same forms of oppression that I aim to confront.

My current curatorial research centres on the decolonisation of the museum. I am particularly interested in addressing the issue of how decolonial discourses have become collapsed into a reformist framework that does not fundamentally challenge the core logic of the museum. At present, I am investigating how the curatorial device of polyphony- the use of multiple, diverse, and sometimes conflicting voices- can call into question monologic forms of meaning-making in the museum. Furthermore, I am researching how the structural elements of museums– namely, their governance, funding structures, and policies– prevent or foster radical forms of decolonial curating. I hope to expand upon this research in the future, especially through exploring the question: is the only way to confront the seemingly inevitable neutralisation of radical forms of decolonising the museum to abolish the institution altogether?