Borbála Soós CV Events Curating
Borbála Soós
bori (at) borbalasoos.co.uk Curating Events CV
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Bori Borbála Soós (b. 1984, Budapest) is a UK-based curator whose work intertwines artistic and ecological research, addressing environmental thinking alongside social, political, and decolonial issues. Recent roles include being curator at Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston University, London (2023-2025), and Co-curator at OFF-Biennale Budapest 2025, which explored the theme of "security" through contemporary art. Between 2021 and 2023 she organised events as Public Programme Curator at Eastside Projects, Birmingham. 2012 to 2019, she was the Director/Curator at Tenderpixel, a contemporary art gallery in central London. She has curated projects in collaboration with institutions such as Kunsthalle Bratislava, tranzit.sk (Bratislava), FUTURA (Prague), Trafó House of Contemporary Arts (Budapest), Rupert (Vilnius), ICA (London), Camden Arts Centre (London), Wysing Arts Centre (UK), and CCA Derry~Londonderry. She has contributed to academia as a visiting lecturer at institutions including Goldsmiths College, the Royal College of Art, Central Saint Martins, Kingston University, and Edinburgh College of Art, among others. Her curatorial approach is characterised by a commitment to ecological systems, social structures, accessibility and queer and anti-colonial narratives, often engaging with themes that challenge conventional perspectives and promote systemic change.

Plant, Animal, Hangover, Social Choreography, System Dynamics, Mushrooms, Language & Politics, Forest, Participation, Commons, Future Landscapes, Decoloniality, Migration, Magic & Politics, Expedition, Seeds, Climate Justice, Botanic Garden, Fugitivity, Layers of Earth, Food Cultures, Art & Ecology, River Ecology, Climate Change, Architecture, Security, Queer, Civil Society, Social Change, Border Ecologies, Biennale

Metal Peterborough, UK, Research Residency, 2022 – 2023

As an outcome of my research residency, I launched a podcasts series that discuss the different layers of earth under our feet, and how they are associated with different influxes of people, plants and animals. The deeper we dig, the less familiar it gets. How these newcomers continue to shape the landscape, and how this might give us new perspectives and critical approached to understanding the temporal nature of us tending to this land?

Index Seminum, the Botanical Garden of Comenius University, Bratislava; the Pink Whale, Bratislava, 23 – 24 August, 2022, events in collaboration with KunstHalle Bratislava, Slovakia

Performative readings by Borbála Soós at the Botanical Garden of Comenius University. The texts re-created a journey of colonial discovery as they were aligned with different habitats in the Botanical Garden of Bratislava. The readings reflect on the creation of botanical gardens as aspirational colonial structures, and their role in the collection, banking and dissemination of seeds, species and ideas of the exotic Other.

A screening programme shown at the Pink Whale, Bratislava. Curated by Borbáls Soós with moving image works by artists Ana Vaz & Tristan Bera, Laura Huertas Millán, Pilar Mata Dupont, Pedro Neves Marques, Asunción Molinos Gordo, Gerard Ortín Castellví and Jonas Staal. The films reflected on colonial journeys of discovery and how nature is politically, culturally and cinematically constructed.

Border Environments: The entangled politics of ecology and migration – organised by the Centre for Research Architecture (London) in collaboration with Het Nieuwe Instituut (Rotterdam), 12 - 13 May 2022, Goldsmiths College, London

Lecture presentation with the Border Ecologies Network, as part of the event The ​​Border Environments. The roundtable programme set out to critically examine the ways in which environmental systems become active agents in the management and control of migrant bodies and their modes of circulation, resulting in violent and even deadly consequences. Over the two-days of the programme addressed a number of urgent issues including the weaponisation of semi-natural landscapes in border struggles, the role of conservation projects and nature reserves in demolishing migrant camps, and the transformation of ecologies into tactical security regimes.

Leader of a Peer Forum, January – October 2020, at the Horniman Museum and Gardens, London, UK in collaboration with Artquest

I was selected to lead a series of Peer Forum meetings engaging with the scientific work, collections and displays of the Horniman Museum and Gardens. The group is running a reading group, regular meetings with the Horniman curators. They discusses how each of their artistic practices relate to the ecologies of rewilding and what sort of ideas, forms and methodologies this might encompass, such as communal projects and projects in unusual locations; in collaboration with scientists and other researchers; and exercising practices of care...

Leader of Forest Ecologies, online reading group, April – June 2020, in collaboration with tranzit, Bratislava, Slovakia

The reading group explored themes such as forest ecologies, permaculture, rewilding and radical care in relation to the exhibition 'Ecologies of the Ghost Landscape. The Word for World is Forest' I curated for tranzit.sk in Bratislava, Slovakia.

How to Talk to Birds? – lecture performance – WE ARE WOODS: About Plant Intelligence and Interspecies Communication, 26 – 28 July 2019, Czech Republic

The lecture performance was part of the events at the forest gathering with WOODS, Community for Cultivation, Theory and Art, near the village of Písečná, Ústí nad Orlicí, in the foothills of the Orlické Mountains, Czech Republic. Titled WE ARE WOODS: About Plant Intelligence and Interspecies Communication, artists, theorists, curators, sociologists, plant and star experts met, discussed, cooked, and shared time in a forest removed from agricultural use and devoted to the common exploration of our interconnected existence.

Worlds open inside a shell, 28 September 2018, Blitz, Valletta, Malta

For the closing event of her residency at Blitz, curator Borbála Soós creates an exhibition in a form of a talk. Bringing the audience on a journey evoking a series of existing and imagined spaces in Malta and on other similar islands, she flexibly opens up the mind to what a space of an exhibition could contain, expanding and contracting along the way.

SPACE Art+Technology, Here: After, Now, Next – Panel Discussion Chair, 31 May 2018, SPACE, London, UK

The panel discussion with former SPACE Art + Technology artists in residence explored the residency focused on emerging technologies, looking at how artists react and adapt to digital trends.

CONGLOMERATE, Screening and Launch of Block Four, followed by discussion moderated by Borbála Soós, Sunday, 15 October 2017, at Camden Arts Centre, London, UK

CONGLOMERATE is a collaborative Gesamtkunstwerk presented in the form of a television network. The project is realised by a core team of five Berlin-based artists and filmmakers: Sol Calero, Ethan Hayes-Chute, Derek Howard, Christopher Kline and Dafna Maimon.

Lecture on Mushrooms as Enablers, as part of  Theory of Leaves, July 2017, organised by Emma (Veronica Valentini) in Offagna, Ancona, Italy

Looking at plants as model for collaboration among human and non-human spheres, the four-day programme aimed to generate a climate of knowledge through cohabitation, exploration, distributed and situated learning promoted by artistic and cultural production.

A realm where cause-and-effect no longer applies, 25 April, 2017, Autarkia, Vilnius, Lithuania

Mushrooms sprout to life even in the darkest conditions. Spores of inspiration spread on the breeze of science, awash in irrepressible fantasy. Tropical climates are ripe for fermentation. While the yeast ferments, the revolution foments. Look through the cellular membrane: nostalgia therapy. Simulation leads to stimulation. The mountain pulls away turbulent weather, leaving sunshine over the beach. Escapism is a fundamental aspect of human life and mental health. All options are the best options. Heaven is a Place on Earth...

Rupert, Curatorial Residency, 1 until 30 April 2017, Vilnius, Lithuania

As part of the residency at Rupert my research focused on the organisational systems of fungi species, slime mould, plants and deep sea creatures in relation to social structures...

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