Diana Marincu
IKT Board Application
What specific skills, expertise, or perspectives do you believe you would bring to the IKT Board?
I am an experienced curator and cultural manager, devoted to building up institutions, artistic contexts, and networks in Romania. I have dedicated the last 13 years to a large variety of art projects, as a board member at The Paintbrush Factory Cluj (2013-2017), as the Artistic Director of Art Encounters Foundation Timisoara (2018-Present). In 2022 I was awarded the Bega Art Prize by Kunsthalle Bega for my activity as a freelance curator. Amongst the artists presented in my projects I would like to mention Adrian Ghenie, Harun Farocki, Mircea Cantor, Ioana Nemeș, Jasmina Cibic, Yane Calovski & Hristina Ivanoska, etc.
Throughout my tenure as Art Encounters Foundation director, I constantly and sustainably managed to bring together in collaborative – and often multidisciplinary – projects a large number of diverse public and private institutions and organizations, including nbk Berlin, Centre Pompidou Paris, SMAK Ghent, Zacheta Warsaw, Praksis Oslo, Invisible Dust UK and many more.
I work very well in teams, I am a collaborative curator, who always searches for new partners of dialogue and many of my exhibitions are developed in close contact with my peers (some of them IKT members themselves), with the artists I visit, and the institutional networks that I create. I am very fortunate to having a very good support structure through my colleagues and collaborators, helping me to develop the program of the Art Encounters Foundation since 2018, and generating new international partnerships every year.
The perspective that I will bring to the IKT structure is directly related to what I have learned from initiating, organizing and coordinating the Art Encounters Biennials in the past 6 years. I believe in coproductions as a new and sustainable institutional model, and in an interdisciplinary approach of the curatorial research, fundraising and audience development.
What motivated you to apply for a position on the IKT Board, and what do you hope to achieve or contribute if selected?
I believe that my skills, expertise, and involvement in diverse, international networks will allow me, as an IKT board member, to bring in new, valuable and unique members from Central and Eastern Europe; to enhance the IKT outreach and visibility to include the perspectives of the new generation of curators coming from marginalized contexts; and to address what I consider to be one of the most relevant issues in the art world today: the use of art and culture to advance social change, by creating meaningful, collaborative bridges across all artist communities, as well as between artists and a variety of audiences.
In conclusion, my hope as an IKT board member is to foster and implement creative funding ideas; bring in new members (including members from less visible communities); and continue to create support-structures and sense of belonging by building strong and meaningful professional networks.