IN SESSION: Why publish? Publishing as an expanded curatorial practice

Exploring publishing as an expanded curatorial practice, this conversation between Dr Laura Vallés Vílchez (Senior Tutor, Curating Contemporary Art, RCA) and Dr Lola Olufemi (writer and organiser) considered Black feminist thinking and speculative imagination as radical political tools to envision new futures.

Drawing on notions of intimacy and care, as well as cultural resistance, the talk examined how publishing as a mode of critical and creative practice can intersect with political organising and curatorial work.

Within the talk, Dr Lola Olufemi shared a presentation which looked deeper at their work and research, specifically focused on curating, publishing, and community. The conversation then developed as Vílchez and Olufemi discussed what is worth preserving in curating, the idea of legacy and tradition, and how to navigate the contradiction between creating work and having to commodify work. The talk then finished with an interactive Q&A between the audience and Vílchez and Olufemi.

This IN SESSION expanded on the 2025 theme of the Curating Contemporary Art and Design Summer School, if you are interested in exploring the topic of the talk further, why not apply to our summer school?

Dr Lola Olufemi

Dr Lola Olufemi is a Black feminist writer and Stuart Hall Foundation researcher from London who recently completed her doctorate based in the Centre for Research and Education in Art and Media at the University of Westminster. Her work focuses on the utility of the political imagination in the textual and visual cultures of radical social movements, examining the role cultural production plays in materialist resistance and collective conceptualisation of futurity. She is the author of Feminism Interrupted: Disrupting Power (Pluto Press, 2020), Experiments in Imagining Otherwise (Hajar Press, 2021) and the forthcoming Against Literature (2026), and is a member of 'bare minimum', an interdisciplinary anti-work arts collective.

Dr Laura Vallés Vílchez

Dr Laura Vallés Vílchez is a curator, editor and researcher exploring intersections between pedagogy, curating and publishing. She is Senior Tutor in the Curating Contemporary Art programme at the RCA and a founding member of Concreta. She has led European projects like the RCA’s 4Cs: From Conflict to Conviviality through Creativity and Culture and curates exhibitions that foreground artistic research and experimental display, collaborating with institutions such as MACBA, IVAM, Artium, Gasworks and LUX. She has directed biennials including Myths of the Near Future and Arte Vivo. Also a translator, she has inhabited the words and worlds of Isabelle Stengers, Donna Haraway, Moyra Davey and Paul B Preciado.