2026 Fellows

Born 2002, Lisbon, Portugal 
Lives in Leicester, UK

Bijal is an art curator, interested in Marxist methodologies that interrogate how art functions in contemporary society. She believes that art is a contradictory terrain with the potential to imagine and create radical futures. Having worked at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham over the last year she developed an acute understanding of the vast ways that visitors engage with art exhibitions, within the gallery walls and beyond. Her interest in the ways that art awakened and challenged people's consciousness guided her curation of Up Town Again at TwoQueens Gallery in Leicester which explored the physical, temporal, and psycho-geographical dimensions of the city. During her time at New Curators, she wants to further interrogate the functions and roles of art as a commodity. Bijal holds a BA in History from the University of Cambridge where she explored the history of European overseas empires, decolonial movements, and early modern material culture. 

Born 1998, Chicago, USA
Lives in Chicago, USA

Chris is a curator, researcher, and cultural anthropologist whose practice centres on Black feminist ethnography, visual culture, and the transformative potential of contemporary art. They hold an MA in Visual and Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where they were a New Artist Scholar. Chris earned a BA in Anthropology/Sociology and minors in Curatorial Studies and French from Spelman College. Their curatorial work interrogates histories of dispossession, resistance, and the afterlives of slavery, engaging contemporary art as a critical site for dialogue, memory and justice. They have contributed to curatorial and research initiatives at institutions such as the Montclair Art Museum, the New York Times, and the Schomburg Centre, and participated in international programmes including the Sharing Stories on Contested Histories Fellowship. Through exhibitions, writing, and collaboration, Chris aims to amplify silenced narratives and cultivate spaces of accountability and radical imagination.

Born 1998, Bogotá, Colombia
Lives in Bogotá, Colombia

Dulce Ariadna is a Latin American curator, art historian, researcher, cultural worker and songwriter from Colombia. Her practice seeks to materialise the right to culture, making art accessible. Her academic focus includes historiography and contemporary art history. As a co-founder and President of REDLEHA (Red Latinoamericana de Estudiantes de Historia del Arte),  she co-leads a regional network spanning 28 universities across 11 Latin American countries, where she is currently coordinating the Symposium 'América invertida'. She earned her degree in Art History from Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano. She later joined the Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá (MAMBO) and worked as field producer for the museum’s outreach project MAMBO Viajero (2025), promoting access to art and culture. She has worked as a curatorial assistant (2021) at the Museo Amaranto of Universidad Externado de Colombia. Alongside this institutional work, she develops her independent curatorial practice, curating projects such as INFAMIA 1880 (2024) by artist José Pérez, which explored the historical exclusion of Deaf communities. Her approach to curating is intersectional, focussing on accessibility, language and geography.

Born 1999, Quito, Ecuador
Lives in Guayaquil, Ecuador

Juan Felipe Paredes is a curator, publisher, and graphic designer based in Ecuador. His research unfolds through exhibitions, printed matter, visuals, DJ sets, and creative writing. He holds a BA in Literature from the Universidad de las Artes (Guayaquil), is an editor at recodo press, and one half of juniin, a former artist-run gallery in Guayaquil now operating as a nomadic curatorial duo. Paredes has curated projects in Ecuador, Spain, Perú, and the United States. 

Working through New Historicism and New Criticism, his practice uses close reading and formal analysis to build conceptual detours around official narratives. He previously served as Assistant Curator at MAAC and Artistic Co-Director of Museo Nahim Isaías. Other work collaborations include the Ecuadorian Ministry of Culture, Fundación EACHEVE, Oscar Santillán's Studio ANTIMUNDO, and Studio Stephano Espinoza Galarza.

Born 1999, Seoul, South Korea
Lives in London, UK

 Mark Mingu Cho is an exhibition-maker and art-professional who delves into curatorial practices originating from contexts once-considered peripheral to traditional art hubs. Having moved to the UAE just before the opening of Louvre Abu Dhabi, Cho was led to probe what is at stake in the construction of mega-institutions, which he sought to answer through photography, working with Tarek Al-Ghoussein. At 'al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art,' Cho collaborated with Salwa Mikdadi to build a scholarship around the circulation of art and the history of exhibitions between Korea and the Arab world through archival research.

His time in the South Korean army's intelligence and mobilisation unit informs his interests in artists who utilise materials and objects commonly found in a military context. A seasonal image-maker, Cho published his first photo-book '111 DAYS' with m.33, which is distributed by 'Perimeter.'

Born 2002, Los Angeles, USA
Lives in London, UK

Nana Ampofo is an artist, educator, and abolitionist whose practice creates opportunities for currently and formerly incarcerated individuals whose stories and artistic contributions are often erased. Born and raised in Los Angeles in a Ghanaian household, her work is grounded in community care, cultural memory, and restorative justice, understanding art as a tool for communication, healing, and connection for people impacted by incarceration.

She holds a BA in Philosophy with a minor in Museum Studies from DePaul University in Chicago and an MA in Art Education, Culture, and Practice from University College London’s Institute of Education. Nana is a former prison art educator who taught at Stateville Maximum Security Correctional Center in Illinois, working with individuals serving life sentences, as well as at Cook County Jail, one of the largest jails in the United States. Her practice focuses on expanding access to contemporary art, museums, and galleries, reimagining cultural institutions as bridges to reintegration, belonging, and collective care.

Born 2000 in New Delhi, India
Lives in New Delhi, India

Ruchika is a curator and cultural practitioner working across exhibition-making, public programming, and film-based contexts. She has worked with the fifth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale on public programming and artist interviews, and with the Dharamshala International Film Festival (2023), contributing to festival planning, partner coordination, and team-building. Most recently, she was a Senior Fellow with Khoj International Artists’ Association, where she worked on artist residencies, exhibitions, and pedagogical programmes for arts curation and management.

Alongside her curatorial work, she has worked on fiction and documentary film projects. She is voluntarily engaged with collectives and small organisations situated at historical margins, whose work is shaped by political dissent in India, and manages digital communities to improve access to information within the arts.

Ruchika graduated from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, with a focus on literature and aesthetics. Her current curatorial interests centre on contemporary art practices that explore ritual and intimacy, particularly in relation to the state of ecological collapse. Through New Curators, she seeks to develop a transnational, research-driven curatorial practice.

Born 2001, Brooklyn, USA
Lives in Brooklyn, USA

Runnie Exuma is a Brooklyn-born and bred artist, curator, and researcher, whose practice attends to performance art, movement, and sound-based inquiry. Her curatorial-research work considers artistic constructions of blackness and displacement, notably how black artists contend with race and global economy converging with themes of mobility and (dis) location. She specializes in global histories of racial slavery, forced displacement, and labor. Oscillating between islands, seas, and deserts, her practice is vested in black aesthetics — specifically Caribbean and North African/Mediterranean geometries and aesthetic exchange. Experimenting around material, motion, and form, her current work explores littoral cultures and land-sea margins, trans-Saharan connectivities, blackness in North African art, and networks of mobility/circulation between sand and sea. Runnie is currently a doctoral candidate at Princeton University in anthropology.

She holds a BA from  L’institut d’études politiques de Paris (Sciences Po), and a BA from Columbia University in comparative literature. Alongside New Curators, Runnie holds extensive experience as a researcher and writer at several institutions, among them the New York Times, the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), the University of Chicago, the Princeton Art Museum, and as a former research assistant to Professor Saidiya Hartman at Columbia University. 

Born 2001, London, UK
Lives in London, UK

Sadie Barnett is a South London curator, visual artist and artist educator. She approaches her practice from an arts background rooted in representing the lived experiences of minoritise groups. This allows her work to centre diversity, accessibility, and the importance of welcoming excluded groups into arts spaces. 

She got her BA in English Literature at the University of Birmingham, remaining in the city for several years and working across institutions such as the Ikon Gallery, The Wolverhampton Gallery and The Exchange. Upon returning to London she begun doing art and learning facilitation at the London Museum and Young V&A. 

Sadie was Co-Curator and Artist Educator for (Re)Coded (2024) at Ikon Gallery, an exhibition focused on exploring ideas around mental health in Caribbean communities. This work is now part of Ikon’s What Are The Odds (2026) – a group exhibition looking at health stories and spaces through art. Continuing her passion for Arts in Health she then worked on the arts team at St George’s Hospital Charity – assisting in curation, collection care and arts programming across the hospital.  

She is also passionate about music, with experience as DJ, singer and music journalist -  both for written publications and as a cofounder of the podcast Femme.FM, which highlights female and nonbinary voices in music. 

Born 2000, Cape Town, South Africa
Lives in Johannesburg, South Africa

Seth Kriger is a curator and cultural worker based between Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa. With a background in Art History, African Literature and Environmental Science, Krigers' practice seeks to engage para-laterally, holding attention towards congruent pedagogical models of curatorial concern. Maintaining a strong focus and allegiance to visual and systemic cultures from Africa and the greater Global South, Krigers' practice aims to engage with the curatorial as a wider domain of critical thought, social participation and decolonial enquiry. 

He has curated and presented several exhibitionary projects, institutionally and independently, across various countries and contexts, such as the Nature of Cities Festival (Berlin, 2024), the Supermarket Art Fair (Stockholm, 2024), the Marketphoto Workshop (Johannesburg, 2024), Under Projects (Cape Town, 2023), and the Norval Sovereign African Art Prize, 2024 (Norval Foundation, Cape Town), amongst others. Further to these projects, he has completed curatorial fellowships and residencies with the Reinwardt Akademie (Amsterdam University of Arts) and Angels and Muse, a centre focused on contemporary African Art based in Lagos, Nigeria.

Born 2000, Hồ Chí Minh City, Việt Nam
Raised on Dharug and Gadigal Country/Sydney, Australia
Lives in London, UK

Vy Tsan is a curator whose practice examines global history through the movement of materials and objects, semiotics of displacement, and moments of contradiction. She is also interested in the evolving relationships between human and non-human systems within climate-adaptive contexts. 

She has held positions as Curatorial Assistant, International Art at the National Gallery of Australia; Content Coordinator at Craft + Design Canberra; and Curatorial Intern at Galeri Nasional Indonesia. 

Most recently, Vy was a 2025/26 Fellow for the Venice Biennale of Architecture, where she invigilated the Geology of Britannic Repair exhibition at British-Kenyan Pavilion and conducted research mapping the ‘material after-lives’ of the exhibition objects following de-installation. 

Vy holds a Bachelor of Laws (Honours) and a Bachelor of Art History & Curatorship from the Australian National University, and a Postgraduate Diploma in Asian Art from SOAS University of London, supported by the Dr Hettie Elgood Scholarship.