Marianna Tsionki is Associate Professor and University Curator at Leeds Arts University heading up the Curation and Library department. She is responsible for strategic and operational planning of libraries and curatorial programmes, collections and archives management and research development. Marianna serves at East Street Arts Board of Trustees, and is a member of the Hyde Park Art Club (Leeds) steering group, 422 Arts (Manchester) Advisory Committee and ARHIVO PAPERS Editorial Board (Journal of Photography and Visual Culture). She is member of several international, professional and research networks including the Association of Curators of Contemporary Art (IKT), Anthropocene Commons Pedagogies group, SAR: Artist Pedagogy Research Curatorial sub-group, ARCHIVO research network and British Art Network.
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Marianna is a curator, researcher and educator working at the intersection of contemporary art, ecology and technology. She is concerned with the role of curatorial and institutional practice in a time of ecological crisis, with particular focus on methodologies of alter-institutionality and critical pedagogy. Her current research focuses on eco-feminist practices, indigenous Naturecultures and local ecological knowledge as methods of developing kinship networks and interspecies modes of life. Previous curatorial projects and writing have focused on scientific and social conditions of the Anthropocene as well as aesthetic and knowledge production of climate change issues; topics of interest have been the impact of globalisation, migration, the politics of extractivism, global ecologies of resource exploitation, humanity’s post-industrial relationship with nature. Her writing features in numerous books published by Sternberg, Palgrave Macmillan, Wetlands, and dpr-barcelona, among others.
Among her curated projects are the exhibitions Oliver Ressler: Hothouse Planet Breakout at Blenheim Walk Gallery, Leeds (2024), The School of Mutants at Blenheim Walk Gallery, Leeds (2024), Marwa Arsanios: Who is Afraid of Ideology? at Blenheim Walk Gallery, Leeds (2022), Kyriaki Goni: Networks of Trust at SixtyEight Art Institute, Copenhagen (2022), Meteorological Mobilities at Apexart, NYC (2020), A Cinematic Museum of the Everyday at Next Mixing, Shanghai (2019) and Polyrhythmia at Castlefield Gallery NAS, Manchester (2017). She is currently working on two curatorial projects: A Common World in Transition – An Assembly (2020-ongoing) and We live, like trees, inside the footsteps of our ancestors (2021-ongoing).
