Let’s visit Coco Fusco: I Learned to Swim on Dry Land with Elvira Dyangani Ose 

Elvira Dyangani Ose has occupied the role of Director of the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) since September 2021. Previously, she was Director of The Showroom, London. She sits on the Advisory Council of Tate Modern and is a member of the Thought Council of the Fondazione Prada, where she has curated numerous projects, including: Theaster Gates: True Value; Nástio Mosquito: T.T.T. Template Temples of Tenacity; and Betye Saar: Uneasy Dancer. Until the end of November 2018, she was Creative Time’s Senior Curator, co-curating the 11th edition of the Summit entitled On Archipelagos and Other Imaginaries: Collective Strategies to Inhabit the World, among other projects.

Dyangani Ose was curator of the eighth Gothenburg International Biennial for Contemporary Art, (GIBCA 2015) and Curator of International Art at Tate Modern (2011–14). Previously, she was Curator at the Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, and the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Seville, and Artistic Director of Rencontres Picha – Lubumbashi Biennial (2013). Multidisciplinary in nature, her curatorial projects address the narration of history as a collective experience, the way in which public space is intervened, and the recovery of non-Western narratives and epistemologies. They include: A Story Within a Story… (2015); Ibrahim El-Salahi: A Visionary Modernist (2013); Across the Board (2012–14); Carrie Mae Weems: Social Studies (2010); Arte Invisible (2009, 2010); and Olvida Quien Soy/Erase Me From Who I Am (2006).

As a specialist in contemporary African art, she has taught seminars and participated in conferences about contemporary African artistic production and culture. She is a doctoral candidate in the History of Art and Visual Studies at Cornell University in New York. She holds a Diploma of Advanced Studies in the History and Theory of Architecture from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya and a degree in History of Art from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Recently, she served as a visiting professor in Catalan Studies, an initiative organised by the Institut Ramón Llull and the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies (CEMS) at New York University.