“Like A Village Having A Festival”
Interview with Thuli Mlambo-James

When curator Thuli Mlambo-James, Director and Founder of the Johannesburg, South Africa-based organization Ujamaa Arts, received an email inviting her to Berlin on behalf of Gallery Weekend, her initial thought was that it was a scam. “I guess people reflect where they live, and I live in a country in which it’s possible for something like this to happen. You get an email saying you’ve been selected for something, just transfer money here…” she tells me over video call. Mlambo-James, who founded Ujamaa Arts in 2018 to bring more visibility to emerging artists, was also the co-curator of the South Africa Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale, in 2022. Past the initial surprise at being invited by people she had never met, she realized that she actually did have a connection to a Berlin gallery: Eigen + Art, with whom she began a conversation about a future collaboration after gallerist Judy Lybke saw the South Africa Pavilion in Venice. “I thought it was actually a smart move because I guess they wanted to continue the conversation.” Thankfully, Mlambo-James accepted the invitation, and spent several action-packed days visiting exhibitions with a group of some 20 international curators and art writers. I caught up with the self-described “emerging curator” via Zoom to find out what impressions she took with her from her first-ever Gallery Weekend Berlin.

How does that relate to your focus as a curator? What questions do you deal with in your curatorial work?

I focus on more social issues. During GWB, I actually created a small show with the Mental Health Art Space in West Berlin. I was introduced to the space through my university. I’m studying remotely with Node Center for Curatorial Studies, and my professor An Paenhuysen introduced me to the founder Kathy-Ann Tan because the space’s work relates to my thesis, which is on the suffering of the Black body, and especially the Black female body. I curated a show based on an artist called Palesa Ndlovukazi Sibiya, a South African performance artist who suffered a lot of gender-based violence. She was doing her MA in Dramatic Arts in Johannesburg, and tragically, she committed suicide last year. She’d been asking me for years to manage her work, but at the time I wasn’t confident enough to deal with performative arts. Having done this program with Node gave me the confidence to speak of her work. We did a screening and a talk, but the bigger plan is to have a show in Berlin next year, ideally in a bigger space and also involve maybe other institutions and experts in mental health and performance artists. And have a conversation around that, and around how to support each other. Also, I just discovered that May is a mental health month, so it could actually coincide with GWB next year.

That brings me to the beginnings of GWB, which is actually a format that grew out of Berlin’s gallerists joining forces and pooling resources to create an alternative mode of attracting audiences and collectors to Berlin.

Actually, I did feel that spirit. It felt like a village having a festival, where everyone’s interconnected. People were interested in finding out our opinions about the shows. You don’t feel that when you go to art fairs. There’s that whole desperation where galleries are trying to sell work, whereas here it was more conversational and making sure that people understand the work. I think it’s really a format that gives space. First of all for the galleries to show their own program in their own spaces as opposed to going to a fair, but also to really engage on a different level.