Programs Curator's Perspective - Irlando Ferreira

*Seats are limited. Registration is required.

In this talk, Cabo Verdean curator and researcher Irlando Ferreira (ICI Curatorial Research Fellow, 2024) explores how art and curatorial practice can serve as acts of resistance, rooted in what he calls an "Atlantic perspective." In his research and writing, Ferreira situates Cabo Verde at the "navel" of that Atlantic perspective, a site of connectivity and creative force that serves as a model for transformative new curatorial frameworks. For Ferreira, art and curating can mobilize the experiences of island life in the Atlantic to foster community, dialogue, and transformation, and open pathways to new forms of cultural and social belonging.

Ferreira first reflects on how generations of artists and curators across Cabo Verde have employed collective resistance to define cultural identity—including at the National Centre for Art, Craft and Design, where he served as director and chief curator from 2015 and 2023. He then introduces his broader framework of "curatorial resistance," a global methodology that invites curators and cultural practitioners worldwide to rethink their work amid the consolidation of national narratives. This approach foregrounds creativity as a response to constraint, especially in societies marked by historical rupture and contemporary uncertainty, and offers a web of care, speculation, and imagination through which we can shape alternative futures.

The presentation will be followed by a conversation with Vanessa Selk, independent curator and founder of the Tout-Monde Art Foundation. This program is free and open to the public. 

Vanessa Selk

 Vanessa Selk is an independent curator and cultural practitioner whose work engages contemporary art from the Caribbean and its diasporas. Of German and Guianese heritage, her research examines the relationships between visual culture, politics, and ecology across Afrodescendant, Indigenous, and Latinx contexts in the region, attending closely to the legacies of colonialism and the cultural dimensions of environmental and social transformation.

In 2019, Selk founded the TOUT-MONDE Art FOUNDATION chaired by art historian Dr. Tatiana Flores, which advances engaged artistic practices across the Caribbean through socially impactful programs dedicated to Ecology, Education, and Equality. In 2023, she co-founded ATLANTIC ARTHOUSE with curator Lisa Howie, a collective of artists, creatives and galleries facilitating the circulation, and acquisition of art and design from the Caribbean Mid-Atlantic.

In line with her research on the entanglements of ecology, memory, and postcolonial histories in the Caribbean, she has curated multiple exhibitions, public programs, and multidisciplinary projects in collaboration with museums, non-profit organizations, and research partners. Recent exhibitions include Crossfigurations (2025), the Caribbean Spotlight of the 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair in New York, co-curated with Lisa Howie; HOMO SARGASSUM (2024–2025), an art-and-science collaboration with Louisa Marajo, Dr. Michael Carrasco, and Dr. Martin Munro, presented at the Museum of Fine Arts in Tallahassee and the United Nations Headquarters in New York; and Visual Epistolary Diaries (2024), co-curated with Eline Gourges for the WOPHA Congress in Miami.

Prior to her independent practice, Selk served as Cultural Attaché and Director of the Cultural Office at the French Embassy in Miami (now Villa Albertine), where she curated, directed and supervised artistic and educational programs across Florida and the Caribbean. Earlier, she worked as a French diplomat at the United Nations, contributing to international cultural policies with a focus on Women’s and Indigenous Peoples’ Rights.

Her recent publications include HOMO SARGASSUM (Museum of Fine Arts, forthcoming 2025), The Power of the Story: Writing Disasters in Haiti and the Circum-Caribbean (Berghahn Books, 2023), Forgotten Lands: Neo-Carib Visions, Vol. 6 (2024), and Black Expressionism in the Caribbean Today (Galerie Lélia Mordoch, 2019).

Selk studied International Relations and Political Science at Sciences Po Paris, Cultural and Anthropological Studies at PUC-Rio de Janeiro, and pursued further study in the History of Contemporary Art at the Sotheby’s Institute of Art, New York, as well as Drawing at the New York Academy of Art.