Serving Pantry
Join us for the launch of Pantry - a new research publication authored by The Lilac House.
Pantry emerges from the lived realities of curators navigating structural inequality, precarity, institutional tokenism, and the emotional labour of cultural work. It centres perspectives stemming from intersectional experiences of working-classness, minority ethnicity, migration experience, gender, queerness, and disability, and speaks to the challenges of sustaining a practice on the curatorial margins within systems that continue to exclude, instrumentalise, and undervalue.
Rooted in collective reflection, Pantry insists on a curatorial practice that is situated, emotionally grounded, and structurally aware. It challenges institutional exclusion and asks to move beyond the current optics of diversity. Pantry is an offering to those working across and against traditional hierarchies seeking to build practices of solidarity, sustainability, and structural transformation whilst centring care, accountability and redistribution.
The launch of Pantry will feature a panel conversation with the co-founders of Lilac House, Marta Marsicka and Jazz Swali, with Ricardo Reverón Blanco, and Saziso Phiri who will respond to the themes of the publication through the lens of their own lived experiences as curators navigating the arts sector.
We are inviting you, curators, artists, and cultural workers to join and explore the emotional, political, and structural realities of curatorial practice today.
A limited number of physical copies of Pantry will be available for free at the event (40 copies available) with a digital copy available shortly afterwards.
Supported by the British Art Network (Seminars 2024 Fund).
Access
Find information about getting here and our building access and facilities here.
This event will be held in The Space.
Tickets are free. Booking is required.
Speakers will use microphones.
This event is wheelchair accessible.
If you have any questions around access or have specific access requirements we can accommodate, please get in touch with us by emailing info@nottinghamcontemporary.org or phoning 0115 948 9750.
The Lilac House is a queer, feminist, and working-class curatorial counter-practice by Jazz Swali and Marta Marsicka.
The Lilac House is concerned with:
A. The precarity and erasure of marginalised curators
B. The omission of curators from national and public discourse on creative capital
C. The mental health and well-being of marginalised curators
D. The need to imagine and construct curatorial futures for those on the margins
E. The value of solidarity, sustainability, safety, and security through collaborative practice
The Lilac House is creating space for critical dialogue, resistance, and joy.
Saziso Phiri is a Nottingham-based curator, producer, and artist-mentor with over a decade of experience working across the UK and internationally. Her practice focuses on first- and second-generation British diasporic artists exploring dual identity, as well as public art in informal spaces such as graffiti and street art. Passionate about supporting emerging practitioners, Saziso integrates mentorship and professional development into her curatorial work, fostering growth for artists within the first decade of their practice. She is currently Programme Manager - Culture Lab at Hood Futures Studio in Birmingham.
Ricardo Reverón Blanco is a writer, curator and mentor. He has curated contemporary exhibitions and artistic programmes for organisations such as Aspex Portsmouth, Photoworks and Peckham24. He is one of four co-founders of UnderExposed, a photography platform and collective dedicated to encouraging artistic collaboration. Ricardo’s practice is informed by collectivity and supportive methodologies for artistic production, dissemination and assimilation.
Recent curated exhibitions include 'Labours of Love' (2025) a queer exhibition co-curated with Gemma Rolls-Bentley featuring works by Emily Witham, Alana Lake, BoyBlue and Daira Ronzoni for UK Pride, 'Traces of the Non-Existent' (2025) by Ebun Sodipo, 'CLASSifications' (2024) featuring Dinu Li, Jamila Prowse, Jasleen Kaur and Joshua Raffell, '☰pa●○pa☴' (2023) by Rae-Yen Song, and 'Home is Not a Place' (2022) by Johnny Pitts co-curated with Shoair Mavlian amongst many others.
Event:
Serving PantryDates:
2 Sep 2025, 6pm–7pmSupported by:
