MINNEAPOLIS, MN.- The Walker Art Center announced today that Pablo de Ocampo will be its next Director and Curator of Moving Image.
de Ocampo is a curator currently living in Vancouver, Canada. Over the last 20 years, his practice has been rooted in artists’ film, while also engaging more broadly with the moving image across a wider field of performance, music, and contemporary art. Realizing projects in cinemas, galleries, and on the stage, de Ocampo has continually centered artists and prioritized support for the creation of new work.
Walker Chief Curator Henriette Huldisch stated, “I’m absolutely thrilled that Pablo de Ocampo will be joining the Walker. Pablo is known for his audaciously original approach to programming and his expansive curatorial thinking around the moving image. With his deep commitment to artists, creating a context for their work, and forging lasting connections with audiences, I am super excited to see how he will shape this next chapter of moving image art at the Walker.”
From 2014 to 2020, de Ocampo held the position of Exhibitions Curator at the artist-run center Western Front. His work here facilitated numerous residencies and productions with artists, prioritizing risk and experimentation alongside a curatorial ethic of care, generosity, and support. de Ocampo’s work has always insisted that radical gestures in artistic practice must necessarily exist within, and in relation to, a radical re-orientation of how art institutions actively engage the many publics and communities around them.
“The Walker has always stood out for me as a groundbreaking and vital institution—dedicated to multidisciplinary, experimental practices and championing living, contemporary artists in its programs. The legacy of the Moving Image department specifically, has had an immense impact on the practice and discourse of artists’ film and video across many decades, and I am honoured and humbled to be entrusted with the responsibility to lead that department. I am beyond excited to be a part of this incredible and important legacy, but also to work collaboratively with the Walker’s staff to imagine new possibilities for the future of the Moving Image Program.” de Ocampo said.
de Ocampo’s previous positions include Artistic Director of Toronto’s Images Festival from 2006 to 2014, co-founder/collective member of Cinema Project in Portland, Oregon, and in 2013, programmer of the 59th Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, History is What’s Happening. His writing has appeared in Canadian Art, C Magazine, BlackFlash, and in the catalogues Dissident Lines: Lis Rhodes (Nottingham Contemporary), and Low Relief: Lucy Raven (EMPAC, Mousse, and Portikus). Outside of curatorial positions, de Ocampo is Sessional Faculty at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, sits on the Board of Trustees at the Flaherty Seminar, and has served as a panelist for The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, as well as local, regional, and national art councils.
