Kjell Caminha
Om Kjell Caminha
Kjell Caminha holds an MFA in Fine Art from Valand Academy (2014) and works as an artist-curator, educator and researcher both independently and as an adjunct at Valand Academy, Gothenburg. His specific focus is on the development of curatorial strategies as means for furthering decolonial dialogue, and this is an orientation informing his pedagogical work, artistic research and practice.
Caminha is based in Gothenburg, Sweden where he lectures in the bachelor and master of fine art programs, and coordinates an international advanced course on public art for curators, commissioners and artists (since 2017). Together with artist Ram Krishna Ranjan, he teaches the couse Decoloniality in Contemporary Art and Film. Among other projects, Caminha has curated a series of seminars fostering discussions on hospitality practices, diversity and migration knowledge and politics: 'Practices and Notions of the Migrant Image' (May 2015); 'On Afrophobia: Towards Decolonial Curatorial Approaches' (January 2016); and worked as art educator with focus on building publics and public programming for 'Wheredoiendandyoubegin – On Secularity', Gothenburg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (2017). He has also co-organised the exhibition 'Setting the Table' at Baltic 39 (April 2018) as part of coordination of research project 'Stretched – Expanding Notions of Artistic Practices through Artist-led Cultures' (2015-2018) led by artist and curator Jason E. Bowman.
Together with artists Andreas Engman and Rose Borthwick, Caminha is part of the collective Afterworks that, through hosting, food and discussion, aims to address normative historic structures and to rethink and reframe approaches to being together via specifically framed encounters. Also, Caminha has co-founded and collaborates regularly with Public* Display* of Actions* (P*D*A*), an anti-fascist platform using performance and speech tactics from street and guerilla theater, agitprop, Speakers' Corners, and political assemblies, to initiate contexts for collective experience, demonstration, and dialogue insisting on vigilance and direct process as a dramaturgical method and approach.