The Frame Curatorial Research Fellowship by Frame Contemporary Art Finland is a new curatorial research programme for 2020-2023 organised in close collaboration with four international institutional partners. The first two for 2020-2021 are Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons and EVA International (Ireland’s Biennial of Contemporary Art).

The programme offers support to develop new curatorial research practices and cultivate active curatorial research practices embedded in organisational practice. What kind of curatorial research is needed in order to imagine new ways presenting and mediating contemporary art and cultural production in a form that is inseparable from the daily life, politics and policies of artists and institutions?

The programme will host four fellows between 2020-2023 within the different frameworks related to Frame’s and its partners’ organisational work, research and programming. It offers fellows the opportunity to dive into curatorial research through an environment comprising various agents around Frame and its international partners, including artists, researchers, other practitioners and institutional actors.

In spring 2020 open calls for the first two fellowships, titled “Mapping and Unmapping Geographies”  and “Local, International and Planetary Fictions” are launched. The frameworks of the fellowships have been developed with Frame and its partners to engage with each organisation’s specific programming strands and to interact with their position and context within the field of contemporary art.

Both fellowships will aim to unpack the ways in which geographies can be understood within the field of contemporary art and society today. Both also highlight the need for new approaches to situating art and curatorial research in different geopolitical and geo-cultural contexts in order to imagine socially and culturally just and sustainable shared futures.

Frame and collaborating partners invite research proposals that formulate specific and surprising takes on research contexts. Our goal is to develop new research practices by working with the selected fellows on the basis of their situated and embodied knowledges and research interests. Meanwhile, new co-developing research practises will be fostered to push organisations and fellows in unexpected directions with their curatorial work, working models and institutional policies.

Applicant eligibility

The fellowships are intended for everyone who is interested in actively experimenting with curatorial research and practice regardless of their educational background or professional status.

Applicants are favoured who have experience in curatorial practices or programming work within the arts field. An open-minded attitude towards working with the partnering institutions is welcome.

Applicants may be based anywhere. Details related to specific forms of work, travelling, dates of the fellowship and work timing will be agreed individually with each fellow. Fellows can work part-time, and working time (four months altogether) can span over 2020 and 2021.

Application process 

Please send your application in English by 7 June 2020 in one pdf file to: applications@frame-finland.fi.

Include the title “Frame Curatorial Research Fellowship” in your subject line.

Please include:

• Indication of which fellowship you are interested in (Mapping and Unmapping Geographies or Local, International and Planetary Fictions)
• A preliminary research plan (one  A4 page), containing ideas on the focus and methods of the research in relation to the research and institutional frameworks offered.
• A motivation letter (one A4 page), containing your motivation for developing new curatorial research practices with partnering institutions.
• Portfolio, including CV.

Based on these materials Frame and its partners will invite shortlisted applicants to take part in a video call. The final selection will be made during the summer 2020.

For more information please visit the website: frame-finland.fi