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Dr Marianna Tsionki is University Curator at Leeds Arts University heading up the Curation and Library department. She is responsible for strategic and operational planning of libraries and curatorial programmes, collections management and research development.
Marianna is a curator, researcher and educator working at the intersection of contemporary art, ecology and technology. She is concerned with the role of curatorial and institutional practice in a time of ecological crisis, with particular focus on methodologies of alter-institutionality and critical pedagogy. Previous curatorial projects and writing have focused on scientific and social conditions of the Anthropocene as well as aesthetic and knowledge production of climate change issues; topics of interest have been the impact of globalisation, migration, the politics of extractivism, global ecologies of resource exploitation, humanity’s post-industrial relationship with nature, indigenous and local ecological knowledge.
Marianna has delivered talks and contributed to panel discussions at Tate Modern (London), Tate Exchange (Liverpool), The Whitworth Gallery (Manchester), Castlefield Gallery (Manchester), Open Eye Gallery (Liverpool). She has participated in international academic conferences including the Campus for Climate Action Bath Spa University with TJ Demos and Lucia Pietroiusti, Singapore Biennale Summit 2019, Research Pavilion in the context of the 57th Venice Biennale, Anthropocene Campus Venice HKW and The Curatorial Thing, 5th edition Copenhagen.
She has also delivered lectures, workshops and seminars in art and curatorial theory, media theory, art and ecology at Goldsmiths University of London, Manchester School of Art, Edinburg University, Aarhus School of Architecture, Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and Bard College, New York.
Marianna has been called upon as a juror on several boards including the Association of Art Museum Curators, NYC Awards for Excellence (Exhibitions) 2021, Association of Art Museum Curators, Awards for Excellence (Publications) 2020 and the FUAM Graduate Art Prize 2022, University of Leeds.
Her writing features in numerous books and catalogues published by Sternberg, Palgrave McMillan, Wetlands, and dpr-barcelona, among others.
Among her curated projects are the exhibitions Kyriaki Goni: Data Garden at Blenheim Walk Gallery, Leeds (2023), Marwa Arsanios: Who is Afraid of Ideology? at Blenheim Walk Gallery, Leeds (2022), Kyriaki Goni: Networks of Trust at SixtyEight Art Institute, Copenhagen (2022), Meteorological Mobilities at Apexart, NYC (2020), A Cinematic Museum of the Everyday at Next Mixing, Shanghai (2019) and Polyrhythmia at Castlefield Gallery NAS, Manchester (2017). She is currently working on two curatorial projects: A Common World in Transition – An Assembly (2020-ongoing) and We live, like trees, inside the footsteps of our ancestors (2021-ongoing).
Marianna is a member of the Advisory Committee at 422 Arts, Manchester; a member of the ARHIVO PAPERS Editorial Team (Journal of Photography and Visual Culture) and ARCHIVO research network.
PhD Supervision
Marianna welcomes PhD students, particularly in the subject areas of curatorial knowledge and practice, curatorial theory and exhibition history, institutional critique and alter-institutionality, political art and critical ecological practices, media theory, techno-ecological art practices and environmental media, ecoaesthetics and the Anthropocene, indigenous and local ecological knowledge, geopolitics, migration and mobilities.
Qualifications
Ph.D. in Curatorial Studies, Manchester School of Art, Manchester Metropolitan University.
MA in Contemporary Art Theory, Goldsmiths University of London, Visual Cultures Department.
Postgraduate Diploma in Arts Management and Policy, Birkbeck University of London.
BSc in Multimedia Design, Huddersfield University.
Profile photograph by Jules Lister.