Anissa Touati- Entangled legacies of space: Curatorial projects in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East 

The lecture series is co-hosted by the Senior Loeb Fellowship at the Harvard Graduate School of Design; the Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative at the Religion and Public Life, Harvard Divinity School; Harvard ArtLab; and the Interdisciplinary Art and Design Practices Seminar of Harvard GSD.

Link to information about the event series: https://designcare.cargo.site/

Lecture Details:
Date: Oct 30
Time: 4:30 PM - 5:45 PM
Location: Gropius Room, GSD + over Zoom

Description: The lecture will examine the entangled legacies of a place in different contexts such as a museum of art and history, a cross-site exhibition, a construction site. It examines how these heritages can create space for new liberatory narratives and envision a new world by interweaving past and present to create a new future. Summoning histories and myths, hopes and struggles to reclaim the future through pluriversal solidarities, the lecture will draw on past and current curatorial projects in Africa, Europe and the Middle East.

Anissa Touati is a transnational independent curator. She has been working between the West and the “global South”. From South America to South Asia, she has been a crucial actor of how contemporary art has been traveling beyond the boundaries of the West. Trained as an archeologist and medievalist, she takes the Broader Mediterranean as a source of inspiration for a pluriversal work. She is currently visiting scholar at Brown University, USA and guest curator of ARCO Madrid 2025-2026. Most recently, she served as guest curator 2023-2024 of the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Geneva, curator-at-large of Paris Internationale from 2020-2023 and has been the artistic director of Contemporary Istanbul from 2018-2019. Over the past decade, She has taken on the role of artistic director at several international locations, curated or co-curated exhibitions and projects in many different countries including Chalet Society (France), Thalie Foundation (Belgium), BEMA Museum (Lebanon), Lagos Biennial (Nigeria), Broad art museum (USA) amongst others.

We ask that all lectures and workshop attendees within the Designing Within Conflict: Building for Peace with a Focus on Intersectionality of Injustice and Care series approach each session with respect for the speaker and fellow participants. Each session will have a separate Zoom link, which the series organizers will send out in advance of each session; please do not share the Zoom link. Thank you, and we look forward to seeing you at the lecture.