ANNOUNCING LILA NAZEMIAN AS PROTOCINEMA EMERGING CURATOR FOR 2022

Protocinema is happy to announce Lila Nazemian as Protocinema Emerging Curator for 2022, who will be mentored by: Lumi Tan, Senior Curator, The Kitchen, New York; Tirdad Zolghadr, Curator and Writer, Artistic Director of the Sommerakademie Paul Klee; and Mari Spirito, Executive Director, Curator, Protocinema, Istanbul, New York. Nazemian’s exhibition will be presented in New York in 2022 with an accompanying edition of Protozine.   

In 2015, Protocinema launched our annual Protocinema Emerging Curator Series (PECS), a mentorship program that provides professional training in the form of learning through doing. PECS is an incubator for emerging curators to gain hands-on experience in exhibition-making, from inception to completion, including fundraising and collaboration with partner institutions. Each selected curator works with mentors from the local and international arts community in order to acquire further experience, guidance, and introductions through the process of realizing an exhibition from “soup to nuts”. Please stay tuned over this winter for updates on the development of PECS 2022 Lila Nazemian’s exhibition.

See previous Protocinema Emerging Curator Series exhibitions here - 

Lila Nazemian (she/her) is an independent curator and the Special Projects Curator at ArteEast in New York. Her research and curatorial practice is focused on reimagining approaches to early modern history from the SWANASA region in an effort to counter-narrative revisionism and collective amnesia. Recent curatorial projects include: "A Few In Many Places in New York," Protocinema, Governors Island New York, (2021); "I open my eyes and see myself under a tree laden with fruit that I cannot name," Center for Book Arts, New York (2020); "On Echoes of Invisible Hearts: Image Making and Popular Archiving in Times of Unrest," Station Beirut, (2019); "On Echoes of Invisible Hearts: Narratives of Yemeni Displacement," Poetry Project, Berlin (2018); and "Spheres of Influence," Mohsen Gallery, Tehran (2016). She received a B.A. in History from Scripps College, California; and an M.A. in Near Eastern Studies from NYU, New York. She was a QAYYEM 2019 Curatorial Fellow, was among the inaugural participants of the 2018-2019 Interdisciplinary Art and Theory Program in New York and participated in ICI’s 2018 Curatorial Intensive in Bangkok.

Lumi Tan is Senior Curator at The Kitchen in New York, where she has organized exhibitions and produced performances with artists across disciplines and generations since 2010. Most recently, Tan has worked with Kevin Beasley, Baseera Khan, Autumn Knight, Efraín Rozas, and Kenneth Tam. Previous projects include those with Sibyl Kempson, Half Straddle, Sahra Motalebi, Sondra Perry, The Racial Imaginary Institute, Danh Vo and Xiu Xiu, and Anicka Yi. Prior to The Kitchen, Tan was Guest Curator at the Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain Nord Pas-de-Calais in France, director at Zach Feuer Gallery, and curatorial assistant at MoMA PS1. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Artforum, Frieze, Mousse, Cura, and numerous exhibition catalogues. She was the recipient of the 2020 VIA Art Fund Curatorial Fellowship.

Tirdad Zolghadr is a curator and writer. Since 2017, he has been Artistic Director of the Sommerakademie Paul Klee. Zolghadr’s curatorial work since 2004 includes biennial settings as well as long-term, research-driven efforts – most recently as Associate Curator at KW Institute for Contemporary Art Berlin (2016-20). Writing includes TRACTION: an applied and polemical Attempt to locate Contemporary Art (Sternberg Press, 2016). Ongoing work on Zolghadr’s third novel Headbanger is made possible thanks to support from the Foundation for Arts Initiatives.

Protocinema is a cross-cultural, mission-driven art organization, commissioning and presenting site-aware art in New York, Istanbul and elsewhere. We produce context-specific projects of the highest artistic quality that are accessible to everyone. Protocinema evokes empathy towards an understanding of difference, across regions through exhibitions, educational public programming, and mentorship. Protocinema maintains long-term relationships with artists nurturing sustained growth. Founded by Mari Spirito in 2011, Protocinema is a registered 501(c)3, free of 'brick and mortar', sites vary to respond both to global concerns and changing conditions on the ground. Protocinema.org

Press Inquiries:
Protocinema: Alper Turan, alper@protocinema.org, +49 17670518587, +90 5068706808

Supporters: 
Cowles Charitable Trust, New Jersey; Stephan Stoyanov, Sofia; Gülben Çapan, Istanbul;