Between the Angelic and the Agentic: A Curatorial Autobiography
Between the Angelic and the Agentic: A Curatorial Autobiography
5:30pm Thu 4 June | Abel Smith Lecture Theatre, UQ Saint Lucia | Free, registration required
This lecture traces a curatorial autobiography that is also an intellectual one. Beginning with the 16th Sydney Biennial (2008), continuing through dOCUMENTA(13) in Kassel, Kabul, Cairo, and Banff (2012), and the 14th Istanbul Biennial Saltwater (2015), it reconstructs three moments in which the curatorial act was understood as a form of attention — in the sense proposed by Simone Weil — rather than a form of selection and placement. Each of these projects tested the limits of what an exhibition can hold: revolution, collapse, water, the impossibility of return, the body under duress.
The lecture then turns to a new reflection: the distinction between the angelic and the agentic as a philosophical diagnostic for our present moment. Angel, from the Greek for messenger; agent, from the Latin for one who acts. Both figures operate between worlds, on behalf of another. But the angel is locative, attending, oriented toward the singular other; the agent is optimising, procedural, everywhere simultaneously. Drawing on Walter Benjamin's Angelus Novus, Thomas Aquinas's debates on angelic substance, and Paolo Zellini's distinction between divine mathematics and human algorithms, the lecture proposes that contemporary artificial intelligence has transformed the angel from metaphor into protocol — and that what is now at stake is not the displacement of the cogito but the survival of the loving subject.
This argument is developed in two recent projects: the Geestgrond exhibition of Antony Gormley's work at the KMSKA Antwerp (2026), whose title — combining the Dutch words for spirit and ground — situates the body in the interval between gravity and grace; and Hallucinangels 幻天使, a major exhibition opening at the Rockbund Museum Shanghai in 2027, which gathers works from antiquity to the present to ask what remains of the self when cognition — and perhaps even feeling — is delegated. The answer proposed is not technological or theological but philosophical: Amo ergo sum. I love, therefore I am. The masterclass will develop these concepts in dialogue with the attendees.
About Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev
This June, world-renowned curator Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev will be visiting Australia for a series of public lectures, discussions and master classes, sharing insights into her deeply influential work and its positioning of curatorial practice as a form of care and as a vital tool for thinking, listening, and responding to our shared historical moment.
The tour is made possible through a partnership between The University of Queensland Art Museum, The University of Melbourne with support from the Potter Museum of Art, Art + Australia and the Dr Harold Schenberg Bequest, Australian Institute of Art History and the Macgeorge Bequest, Chau Chak Wing Museum, The University of Sydney, and supported by Milani Gallery.
Christov-Bakargiev is an Italian American curator, art historian, and theoretician internationally recognised for her transformative approach to contemporary exhibition-making. She is best known for her groundbreaking direction of dOCUMENTA (13) in 2012, which expanded across multiple sites to explore themes of trauma, ecology, and interdisciplinary research, and for her foundational scholarship on Arte Povera, which has been pivotal in advancing critical understanding of the movement.
Her curatorial work spans major international exhibitions, including the 16th Biennale of Sydney (2008) and the 14th Istanbul Biennial (2015). She served as Director of Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art and founding Director of the Fondazione Francesco Federico Cerruti (2016–2023) and has held distinguished academic appointments at Northwestern University and the University of Leeds. She is the recipient of the 2019 Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence. She retired as director of Castello di Rivoli in Italy in 2023, where she previously served as chief curator from 2002 to 2009. She is currently honorary guest Professor at FHNW University, Switzerland.
This series is presented in partnership with The University of Queensland Art Museum, The University of Melbourne with support from the Potter Museum of Art, Art + Australia and the Dr Harold Schenberg Bequest, Australian Institute of Art History and the Macgeorge Bequest and Chau Chak Wing Museum, The University of Sydney and supported by Milani Gallery.
