Bilal Akkouche & Alvin Li
The Banff Centre ~ Professional Development Centre Room 103
Visual Arts Open Lecture Series: Bilal Akkouche & Alvin Li, Curators, TATE Modern
Join us for an afternoon presentation with Tate Modern curators Bilal Akkouche and Alvin Li as they reflect on how institutional frameworks shape curatorial practice and artist relationships—and how curators working within these frameworks can navigate, question, and adapt them to help foster a more pluralist, habitable art ecology.
Drawing on their work at Tate Modern, a major collecting institution, they will share insights into acquisitions, committees, and the inherited systems of value and visibility that inform curatorial decisions. These experiences will be contrasted with approaches from non-collecting institutions, such as the Barbican in London and Para Site in Hong Kong, to explore how structural differences influence not only what is possible, but also how curators think.
Akkouche will reflect on his experience with the Middle East, North Africa, and Africa Acquisitions Committees, while Li will draw on his background in writing and critical theory to consider a curatorial approach attentive to context, complexity, and ambivalence. Together, they will ask how tools such as art history might be used to connect rather than canonize.
This presentation is not a one-way conversation. Artists are invited to share their perspectives: What kinds of curators have enabled the most generative encounters? What do artists most need from institutional or independent curators today?
Akkouche and Li are faculty members for the Fall 2025 Banff Artist in Residence (BAiR)—a transformative five-week residency that provides mentorship, critical feedback, and studio time to visual artists and curators at any stage of their career.
This event is part of the Visual Arts Open Lecture Series, which presents talks by leading Canadian and international artists, curators, and academics.
Visual Arts is supported by the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Outstanding Artist Program.
Photo of Alvin Li by Jo Metson Scott.