Emerging Curators Institute fellowship program 2022
Raíz Symbiotisk (raˈis – SIM- [BY] + [OT] + [ISK])
Pamela Vázquez (México) and Emma Wood (Sweden, USA) are an artist-curator duo working under the name Raíz Symbiotisk. There is symbiosis in their shared curiosity for fungi: as arts facilitators, as seen from an interdisciplinary artistic practice and a research/archive perspective. Vázquez (she/her) comes from a background in Art History, she has collaborated in curatorial projects exhibited internationally and in the production of public art events. She is currently coordinating a Folk Arts Exchange program between Mexico and Minneapolis (Office of Arts, Culture, and Creative Economy + Weisman Art Museum) and most recently was part of the production team of winter, on-ice art festival Art Shanty Projects 2022. Emma Wood (they/them/hen) is a nonbinary, Swedish-American, arts facilitator and interdisciplinary artist who works with intersections of mycelium and glass. Bridging between science and art to investigate their personal relationship with grief. Their work is on a transition exploring the duality of ephemeral and archival. They were a 2021 Emerging Artist-in-Residence at Franconia Sculpture Park and an Emerging Artist-in-Residency at FOCI MCGA in 2021. Emma and a team of collaborators hosted an art shanty at Art Shanty Projects in 2022. Fungi hold many metaphors, of life and death, of the boundaries of the human, and of new ways of thinking and collaborating. Fungi embody interconnected and supportive communities, as Raíz Symbiotisk, they want to center this in public interaction.
More information on 2022 ECI Fellows:
The Emerging Curators Institute (ECI) supports emerging curators from diverse backgrounds through a fellowship program consisting of in-depth research, professional development, and presentation program. The first of its kind in the region, ECI aims to foster critical dialogue around curatorial practice and provide opportunities for Minnesota-based emerging curators.