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︎ portfolio
︎ writing & commission queries: mandysmerzaban@gmail.com
︎ (currently offline)
bio?
I am an artist and writer inspecting experiences of epistemic injustice and institutional violence in arts and culture organisations. Through listening, drawing and poetry, I consider the phenomenology of institutional relations, probing them as subjects for feminist/artistic/insurgent thinking, poetics, lexicon making and observational humour. I am currently working on my first poetry pamphlet with Short Pieces That Move in Rotterdam. This year I am an artist-in-residence at John Hansard Gallery with artist & graphic designer Rose Nordin exploring more-than-human comms as part of a ‘parasitic comms residency’, organised by Jack Ky Tan.︎
In 2024 I was part of CVAN London’s Writers’ Room, led by artist Jack Ky Tan this was a nine month writing programme for organisations wanting to evaluate the institutional language they use and to create new vocabularies of equity and care, culminating in the publication Policy for Policy. In collaboration with Mosaic Rooms and artists yasamin and sass, I led bad comms poetry, a poetry workshop at the Feminist Library about deconstructing emails, legalese and statements we consider bad communications to make word banks and poetry.
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In 2022, I was a Brooks International Fellow at Tate’s Research and Interpretation department and was a resident at Delfina Foundation, conducting research on anti-racist policy, thinking, and communication in workplace culture. My research employed ethnography, consultancy, poetry, photography, and artistic intervention. (My hoodie is full of secrets).︎
going to revert to a dissociative third person for this bit: From 2009 to 2018, as the founding curator at the Barjeel Art Foundation, Mandy organised over twenty international exhibitions showcasing underrepresented SWANA region and diaspora artists, with venues including Yale University Art Gallery, Singapore Art Museum, and Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, among others. ︎
I studied in the department of History, Theory, and Criticism at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Cultural Translation at American University of Paris.