STEPHANIE SEIDEL

that it’s not enough to bring under-recognized artists into institutional spaces. We need to rethink the ways that we describe and historicize their work.

I’m really interested in how artists think about their own identifications in relation to their art-making practices, both historically and now.

You also have a writing practice. How does that inform your vision?

My first job after Barnard [College] was as an art journalist. I still write reviews for Artforum regularly. When started, was talking to artists constantly, and I began making connections across studio visits and across different practices. I decided to do my own shows to bring these artists and their ideas together. Since 2016, I’ve done nine shows in nonprofits and galleries. I realized was interested in working institutionally to deepen my practice, so I started my PhD at the University of Southern California in 2018, which I’m finishing at the end of the year. I’ve specialized in modern and contemporary art, with a focus on queer, feminist, and anti-racist approaches to historical thinking.

Tell us about “Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living.” More than other U.S. biennials, it’s known for introducing and amplifying the most significant, emerging artists of the day.

I feel incredibly lucky to be working on “Made in L.A.” There are 39 artists in the show, and getting to know each one of them is such a pleasure. It’s been energizing to be welcomed into so many studios. Diana Nawi and Pablo José Ramírez have been amazing curatorial mentors. am inspired by the energy that they bring to their work and their kindness. Diana and Pablo have conceived this incredible structure, where the show is organized in these constellations of loosely conceived genealogies of Los Angeles artists.

I wrote an essay for the catalog that focuses on one of those constellations. My approach to curating is guided by clear feminist politics. In the simplest sense, that means combating systems of exclusion and devoting attention to under-recognized artists. I’m interested in challenging and revising the dominant narratives about contemporary art that tend to exclude non-white methodologies and practices that exceed easy categorization.

IT’S NO SURPRISE THAT STEPHANIE SEIDEL’S work at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami has helped bring the international art world to the city. A thoroughly contemporary curator in all respects, Seidel unearths the understudied facets of every artist’s narrative, from emerging voices to household names.

You joined ICA Miami in the spring of 2016. What makes the museum a unique place to focus your curatorial practice?

Two things are unique and special to me about the ICA’s exhibition program. On one hand, it brings artists to a museum platform to exhibit their work for the first time, such as the shows I worked on for

Diamond Stingily or Tomm El-Saieh. The second thing is providing new insights into established artists’ work, whether less-known or understudied. When we showed him, Tomm El-Saieh was a super-established artist who wasn’t known in the United States much.

The ICA Miami presents artists that you can’t find anywhere else in the U.S. and puts them on the map. Everybody knows Judy Chicago as the Dinner Party artist, for instance, but when we undertook the show “Judy Chicago: A Reckoning,” that I co-curated [in 2018–19], we exhibited many other works. We showed super-minimal early sculptures and superfigurative ’80s paintings to create different narratives and went into depth on the artist’s practice. Recently, I organized “Betye Saar: Serious Moonlight,” a survey that brought lesser-known installations to life that hadn’t been seen for 30 years. The show has toured to the Frac Lorraine in Metz, France, and to Kunstmuseum Luzern in Switzerland.

How do the exhibitions you organize influence the museum as an institution?

What’s most important to me and to the museum is creating scholarship around our programs through lectures, talks, and seminars. Every large show has an exhibition catalog. Personally, as a curator, it’s important to shape narratives that have not been told loudly enough.

Miami also provides a singular context for art viewing.

It’s a very dynamic city that’s unique for the influence of the Caribbean diaspora. In many ways, it’s the crossroads between North America, South America, and the Caribbean.

What’s next?

I’m currently working on a presentation for the artist Tau Lewis—who is going to win the Ezratti Family Prize for Sculpture, awarded by the ICA Miami to a living artist—with a newly commissioned groundfloor installation. I’m also working on a show for Zilia Sánchez, a Cuban artist based in Puerto Rico, which opens next year. I’m interested in historical and contemporary forms of feminism—not as applied to female artists, but rather a way of approaching things and unearthing narratives that lie outside of the mainstream.