Interventions in Flaring Up: Curatorial Practice, Disability Studies, and Critical Dialogue

Join Flare Up curators Natasha Hoare and Mariana Lemos alongside Amanda Cachia and Lisa Slominski, co-editors of forthcoming book series Critical Studies in Art, Disability & Access (Manchester University Press), for a discussion of curatorial practice, disability studies, access, and cultural production.

Taking Flare Up as both a conceptual and political point of departure, the conversation will explore how disability and chronic illness unsettle normative assumptions around temporality, communication, aesthetics, labour, authorship, participation, and institutional practice. Moving between exhibition-making and academic discourse, the event considers disability not as a supplementary framework for curating, but as a critical methodology that reshapes how contemporary art can be experienced, organised, and understood.

The discussion also introduces the intellectual concerns of Critical Studies in Art, Disability & Access, a new scholarly series foregrounding disability studies as an essential field for rethinking visual culture, access, embodiment, and the politics of representation across contemporary art and curatorial practice.

Natasha Hoare and Mariana Lemos will begin by introducing the curatorial framework and themes of Flare Up, reflecting on the exhibition’s engagement with the aesthetics and poetics of illness, disability, neurodivergence and Deafness – or what is increasingly referred to as crip. Amanda Cachia and Lisa Slominski will then offer short presentations drawn from their respective research and curatorial methodologies in dialogue with questions emerging from the exhibition and the wider field of disability arts scholarship. Cachia will speak on her new book Hospital Aesthetics: Disability, Medicine, Activism, while Slominski, drawing on long-term engagement with supported studios, will reflect on how disability unsettles normative assumptions around communication, labour, and artistic agency.

Departing from the format of a conventional panel discussion, the event will unfold as an open dialogue where speakers generate questions and provocations live in response to one another’s presentations — creating space for critical exchange, collective thinking, and unexpected connections across disability arts, curatorial practice, and contemporary cultural discourse.

Please note this is an online event. A zoom link will be sent to all ticket holders ahead of the event.

BIOGRAPHIES

Amanda Cachia (Ph.D. UCSD, 2017) is Professor of Practice in Museum Studies in the School of Art at the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University and Affiliate Faculty in the Disability Studies B.A. Her research interests include disability art history, theory and activism, crip curatorial practices and access aesthetics, museums, institutional critique, and social justice, and critical disability approaches to translation, movement, medicine, and health. Cachia is the author of three books, Rehabilitating the Asylum: Mental Health Justice and Contemporary Art, (Manchester University Press, forthcoming 2027), Hospital Aesthetics: Disability, Medicine, Activism (Manchester University Press, 2025), and The Agency of Access: Contemporary Disability Art and Institutional Critique (Temple University Press, 2024), the latter of which was shortlisted for the College Art Association’s 2026 Charles Rufus Morey Book Award. She is also editor of Curating Access: Disability Art Activism and Creative Accommodation (Routledge, 2022), which includes over 40 international contributors. She is currently working on her fourth book project, Disability Art: A Political History,under contract with Yale University Press. Cachia is the founding editor of the Critical Studies in Art, Disability & Access book series with Manchester University Press, launched in May 2026 – an ambitious platform that challenges art history’s entrenched ableism by positioning disability as a critical force reshaping curatorial practice, visual culture, and the politics of access; the series is co-edited with Lisa Slominski, author of Non-Conformers: A New History of Self-Taught Artists, published by Yale University Press.

Mariana Lemos is an independent curator based in London working with performance art, affect, and crip phenomenologies. Her curatorial approach is based on disability access and feminist methodologies. She holds an MFA in Curating from Goldsmiths University (2020) and is an Associate Lecturer at the MA Curating and Collections at Chelsea UAL. She is part of the Feminist Duration Reading Group, currently in residency at Goldsmiths CCA, and a Board Member of Saloon. She also works with the Flat Time House in coordinating the London Residency Network. She has published texts in Frieze, Art Review, Flash Art and others. Recent and upcoming projects include Antonia Luxem: On Falling, Annex by the Koppel Project, London (2026); Duets,Teaspoon Projects, London 2025; A Tragical Romance,Wonnerth Dejaco for Curated By, Vienna (2024); Vaivém by Francisca Pinto, Ostra, Lisbon (2024); DIG, IN: Maisie Maris & Laura Mallows’ at Staffordshire St, London 2023; ‘INSOMNIA’ by Leah Clements at South Kiosk, London 2022-23. Upcoming shows include ‘Flare-Up’ at Goldsmiths CCA, London (May-Aug 2026); and Blood and Coffee, Vienna Arts Academy (Nov 2026-Feb 2027).

Lisa Slominski is an American writer, curator and cultural producer based in London. Her work explores activations of access and inclusion in the current art discourse and examines the historical framework of underrepresented artists with a particular interest in agency. She is undertaking her PhD studies at Kingston University with her research project A Liminal Site: Cultural intermediaries, agency, identity and representation (working title). She is also currently a Senior Art Producer for the Contemporary Art Society. Lisa is also a co-founder of Art et al., an inclusive curatorial platform Art et al. which focuses on international commissions and collaboration between arts professionals with and without disability. Previously, she curated public art commissions on Chicago’s mass-transit system with the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs, and for Tenderpixel, London. Curated exhibitions include “Jo Longhurst: Here, Now”, Studio Voltaire (2023) and “Fair Vanity” (2020) which featured artists Nnena Kalu, Lee Godie and Yvette Mayorga, among others. She holds a BA in Visual and Critical Studies from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MA in Art Practice from Goldsmiths, University of London.

Her book, Nonconformers: A New History of Self-Taught Artists (Yale University Press, 2022) presents an international history of artists often identified as ‘self-taught’ advocating for a nuanced understanding of art often challenged by the establishment. It considers how predetermined personal/cultural conditions (race, poverty, disability, mental illness) often presented challenging positions much more complex than just being self-taught. Her articles have also been published by Cambridge University Press, Burnaway: Contemporary Art and Criticism from the American South, Hyperallergic and ArtUK.