Over ten days, I took part in Elsewhere, Nordic 2026, a curatorial research programme with The Curatorial Program for Research (CPR). The programme explored what it means to occupy a margin while functioning locally as a centre, bringing together a small international cohort for exchanges across Helsinki, Stockholm and Copenhagen. Moving from Helsinki to Stockholm and then Copenhagen, I spent an intensive period visiting artist studios, cultural institutions and independent spaces, engaging with artists, curators and organisers, and learning about the different approaches shaping contemporary art across each city.

A significant part of why I applied for the programme was the feeling that, as a curator, I often occupy a position at the margins. Sometimes this is because I am a Black woman, and at other times because I am a Black woman working in the arts. My experience of working in public art adds another layer to this. Public art often operates beyond traditional gallery spaces, engaging with communities, everyday environments and the places people inhabit. Yet, despite its potential to shape how we experience and understand the world around us, it can still be positioned as a form of community engagement or social provision, rather than recognised as an integral part of contemporary artistic and curatorial practice.

Interestingly, this sense of being at the margins became apparent within the programme itself; the conversations and exchanges within the cohort offered valuable opportunities for learning and reflection, while also bringing into focus the different experiences and contexts that shape our curatorial perspectives. But much of the discussion drew on established contemporary art and institutional contexts, while my own practice has been shaped by the cross-pollination of ideas and approaches across different creative fields, informing how I work with public art and engage communities through the arts. 

In a programme exploring the margins of the art world, I found myself reflecting on how my own practice could sit at the margins of the very conversations intended to examine them; this prompted me to think more deeply about how institutions shape our understanding of curatorial practice and influence the perspectives we bring to it. What happens when the frameworks through which we understand curating are themselves shaped by particular institutional contexts? What defines a curatorial practice? Is it how we articulate our ideas, where we have developed our practice, where our work has been shown, or who we have worked with?

Engaging with the cohort helped me recognise that, for me, being at the margins is not simply about being outside the centre. It is also about what that position allows me to see, question and bring to the conversation.

These questions of position and perspective extended beyond curatorial practice to the representation I encountered across the Nordic art scenes. In each city, a local host guided us through their perspective on artists, curators and cultural organisers working at the margins of contemporary art. Across the encounters I experienced, only a handful of the people we met were from non-white backgrounds.

This made me think about the region’s political histories and cultural landscapes, and how these intersect with questions of visibility and representation in the arts. In my spare time, I began looking beyond the encounters organised through the programme to get a fuller picture of the Nordic art scenes. This led me to Southnord, an artist-run platform dedicated to the diverse artistic expressions, approaches and narratives of the Black and Afro-Nordic art scene.

Discovering Southnord revealed a different picture of the Nordic art scene, one I had not encountered through the programme’s visits and introductions. Its focus on Black and Afro-Nordic artists made me reconsider whose practices were being presented as occupying the margins, and whose work remained less visible, even within alternative art networks.

This highlighted the importance of broadening the narratives through which we understand contemporary art, and recognising the diversity of practices that exist beyond the spaces we are introduced to. It also made me question how we define the margins in the first place. Who determines which artists and practices sit at the edges of the art world, and what might we be missing when we rely on established networks to understand those spaces?

For me, discovering Southnord reinforced the importance of looking beyond familiar routes and networks. The margins are not a single, fixed position; they contain their own networks, communities and perspectives, which can remain overlooked if we rely too heavily on established routes to understand contemporary art.

It also brought me back to the question at the heart of the CPR programme: what does it mean to occupy a margin while functioning locally as a centre? Perhaps the margin is not simply a position outside an established centre, but a space with its own forms of knowledge, relationships and cultural production. The challenge is recognising these spaces on their own terms, rather than understanding them only in relation to the institutions and networks that have historically defined the centre.