Spatial Encounters #1: The politics of Display
- Date
- 30 October 2025
- Time
- 18:00 -20:00
- Location
- Goethe-Institut
We are living through turbulent times. Rhetorics of hate and racism spread like wildfire, while the far right is on the rise across the globe. In response, cultural institutions are becoming more aware of their responsibility towards society and especially those who have been long marginalized and excluded. Increasingly, museums are beginning to confront their authoritative, exclusive, and colonial legacies, and to engage with urgent sociopolitical themes, often through contemporary art.But what happens with their spaces and the ways exhibitions themselves are designed? Curation and exhibition design are not neutral; they can be powerful tools for conveying socially engaged, even radical, messages.
How can exhibitions help visitors engage more actively with complex sociopolitical themes? Can a space itself be activating — bringing forward underrepresented voices. inviting visitors to listen carefully, and opening room for reflection? Can we experience the messages of an exhibition by moving through its spaces, rather than only reading about them?
This roundtable, a collaboration of VOX-POP and NARDIV hosted at Goethe-Insitut, brings together scholars and practitioners from the cultural field to reflect on these questions. Together, they will explore how the synergy between art and space can critically activate audiences, foster new forms of engagement and counter passivity against the grim backdrop of our times.
Practical information
This Roundtable takes place at Goethe-Institut (Herengracht 470). The programme starts at 18:00 and lasts until 20:00. Entrance is free.
Speakers
Emilienne Fernande Bodo lives and works in Berlin. Since 2023, she has been Curatorial Assistant for Architecture and Spatial Practices at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), where she curates the annual pavilion series Shaped to the Measures of the People’s Songs and works closely with exhibition designers and the exhibition practices team. Her work supports HKW’s commitment to conviviality and explores pathways towards peaceful and sustainable coexistence.
Bodo studied architecture in Beijing, Zurich, São Paulo, and Munich. She began her career at Sou Fujimoto Architects in Tokyo, contributing to the Ishinomaki Cultural Centre, and later worked at the UNESCO World Heritage Centre in Paris on international urban development programmes.
Mercedes Azpilicueta is a visual and performance artist from Buenos Aires, living and working in Amsterdam. Her practice gathers characters from the past and present who address the vulnerable and collective body from a decolonial feminist perspective. Through fluid, associative connections, she challenges rigid historical narratives to make space for affective and dissident voices.
Working across performance and installation, she draws from speculative Latin American literature, Neo-Baroque art, popular culture, and new materialism, combining “precarious” craft-based techniques with industrial production.
Martha Echevarría is an international curator and cultural producer specializing in documentary photography. Based in Amsterdam, she works with World Press Photo to produce and coordinate its annual traveling exhibition, presented in more than eighty cities worldwide, and has led special exhibitions such as Resilience: Stories of Women Inspiring Change, Celebrating Communities (with NOOR Images and Tony’s Chocolonely), and the 70th anniversary show What Have We Done? Unpacking Seven Decades of World Press Photo. Independently, she is curating an upcoming exhibition on violence in Latin America for El Colegio de México. Her work explores press freedom, ethics in photojournalism, and visual literacy through international collaborations and public programs.
About Zoi Psimmenou
Zoi Psimmenou is an interdisciplinary researcher, content developer, public programmer, and exhibition designer with a background in architecture and an MA in Museum Studies from the University of Amsterdam. She bridges research, curation, and spatial design to create embodied and activating encounters with art, design, and architectural heritage. Her work draws on critical museology and decolonial theory to explore how space, exhibition design, and curatorial practice can unsettle authoritative power structures and foster critical, socially engaged exhibition experiences. She continues this inquiry through the public programme Spatial Encounters as Resident Programme Curator at VOX-POP.