Co-curating Time as a Mother

Damian Christinger (b. 1975, Zurich) studied Global Art History and Intercultural Studies. He works as an independent curator and writer, and lectures at different institutions on transcultural theory and practice, the Anthropocene, and indigenous knowledge. His main focus is on the construction of the Other in intercultural relations, the nature/human dichotomy in Western thought and the de-colonisation of the history of ideas. He has written extensively on transcultural issues and the Anthropocene and published on such different topics as the cultural landscapes of Singapore, the reception of the Amazon in Western art, and Paulo Freire and his legacy.  

His museum show at the Museum Rietberg, where he was a guest curator (2014-15), featured 21 Swiss artists who questioned the relationship between the collection of antique non-European art and its local public. He was a guest-curator for TBA21’s The Current (2015-2016) and the co-editor of the publication Happy Tropics 1 (with Michael Schindhelm). Damian co-curated (with Dimitrina Sevova) New Buenos Aires, an exhibition focussing on the challenges of a postcolonial approach towards curating in Switzerland at Corner College, Zurich. He was also the co-curator of the Assembleia Mothertree (2018), in collaboration with Ernesto Neto, Fondation Beyeler, and Daniela Zyman. 2019 saw the opening of A Ship Will Not Come, an exhibition at the Johann Jacobs Museum in Zurich and a long-term collaboration with Roger M. Buergel and Adnan Softic. In 2020, he participated as a writer in the exhibition Tomorrow is an Island at the ADM Gallery of the Nanyang Technological University as part of the Singapore Biennale. Since 2021, he is the curator for Habitat: A Space for Essays on the Interconnectedness Between Art and Ecologies at the Wyss Academy for Nature, Berne, Switzerland and in 2022 at Espace Diaphanes, Löwenbräu Zurich for video art.  

His latest essays appeared in publications like ArtReview, Kunstbulletin, Diaphanes Magazine, On-Curating and the Swiss Museum Magazine, as well as in a series of books and exhibition catalogues.