Arianna Mercado is a curator and writer based between London and Manila. She is the co-founder of Kiat Kiat Projects, a nomadic curatorial initiative with a focus on alternative exhibition formats. Mercado’s curatorial practice has been involved with understanding and decoding informal relationships, spontaneity, and chaos to grasp varied and persisting methods of collaboration and collective working. Her current research has been focused on thinking through archipelagos and urban wildlife as mirrors into ideas of mobility, networks, and connections. Mercado is the recipient of the 2017 Purita Kalaw-Ledesma Prize for Art Criticism and has worked on projects with Calle Wright, the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design Manila, and the Cultural Center of the Philippines. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Curating at Goldsmiths, University of London.
TWMAIRL – Asia-Art-Activism Issue: “We’re all in this together”
We’re all in this together is a publication project initiated by Arianna Mercado that seeks to chart and map networks of working within and extending past Southeast Asia as a way to offer, discuss, and document alternative histories to dominant and imposed narratives of Western global art centers. This project aims to bring together various collectives, initiatives, and projects rooted in Southeast Asia through collected interviews published together in a series of zines and a website.
The first issue of We’re all in this together collates interviews with members of Asia-Art-Activism, Annie Jael Kwan, Joon Lynn Goh, Howl Yuan, and Youngsook Choi. In this issue, they discuss the beginnings and history of AAA, its environment of care, and the future of AAA post-Raven Row.
To download the full publication click here
