Garden Amidst the Flame, 2022, Natasha Tontey. Courtesy the artist.

Join us for a panel discussion chaired by critic and curator Karen Archey, in conversation with curator and researcher Annie Jael Kwan and publisher, curator and writer Sarah Shin. In this event, the participants will explore ideas of fantasy, myth-making, technology and performativity in contemporary art practice. The discussion will expand on the themes of feminist agency and alternative cosmologies presented within Natasha Tontey’s commission Garden Amidst the Flame. This event is organised in conjunction with Frieze East End Night.

The event has been made possible by Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Karen Archey is Curator of Contemporary Art at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Formerly based in Berlin and New York, Archey worked earlier as an independent curator, editor, and art critic, writing for publications such as Artforum and frieze. At the Stedelijk, Archey cares for the contemporary art and time-based media collections and administrates the contemporary permanent collection display Tomorrow is a Different Day. She has organised major exhibitions of artists Hito Steyerl, Rineke Dijkstra, and Metahaven, as well as the group exhibition Freedom of Movement: the 2018 Municipal Art Acquisitions. She heads the museum’s research initiative on the acquisition, conservation and display of time-based media.

Annie Jael Kwan is an independent curator and researcher, based in London and working across Europe and Asia, whose exhibition-making, programming, publication and teaching practice is located at the intersection of contemporary art, art history and cultural activism, with interest in archives, histories, feminist, queer and alterna-tive knowledges, collective practices, and solidarity. She co-leads Asia-Art-Activism, the interdisciplinary, intergenerational research network, and she was the co-editor of Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia’s guest issue: Archives (2019) and Pathways of Performativity (2022).

Sarah Shin is a writer, publisher and curator whose work includes making books, texts, gardens, games, scents and practices. She co-founded Ignota, a creative publishing and curatorial house exploring consciousness, technology and healing, and Silver Press, the feminist publisher. She is also the founder of New Suns, a curation and storytelling project, which began as a literary festival at the Barbican.