Bilal Akkouche, photo courtesy of the artist, and Alvin Lee, photo by Jo Metson Scott.
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.
About Bilal Akkouche & Alvin Li
Bilal Akkouche
Bilal Akkouche is a writer and Assistant Curator of International Art at Tate Modern, where he works on the Middle East and North Africa Acquisitions Committee and the African Acquisitions Committee. He has co-curated displays of artists including Anna Boghiguian, Pascale Marthine Tayou, and Farah Al Qasimi and worked on acquisitions of key works by Samia Halaby, Merikokeb Berhanu and Baya. Bilal also worked on the 2024 Hyundai Commission Mire Lee: Open Wound and is co-curating the upcoming Nigerian Modernism exhibition opening in October 2025. He has contributed to the likes of frieze magazine and Trigger magazine.
Alvin Li
Alvin Jiahuan Li is a curator and writer based in London, where he serves as Curator, International Art, supported by Asymmetry, at Tate Modern. He previously worked as an adjunct curator at Tate, a contributing editor to frieze magazine and an artistic advisor to the 59th Venice Biennale. He has curated projects in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing and London, and is a frequent contributor to art periodicals and monographs. He is the curator of the Turbine Hall commission Mire Lee: Open Wound, 8 October 2024 - 16 March 2025.