A Practical Response to Lonely Curatorial Practices: Collective Viewing in the Pandemic Curatorial Experiments of Nina Torr

This article examines South African curatorial responses to the COVID-19 lockdowns, focusing on Nina Torr’s practice at the NOW Gallery. The pandemic forced curators to devise unique solutions to continue ‘exhibiting’, and audiences were largely presented with static virtual spaces or viewing rooms. Torr, working in the context of the educational institution The Open Window, presented innovative responses to what she termed ‘lonely curatorial practices’. Exploiting the online collaborative platform Miro, she curated exhibitions addressing the lack of ‘collective viewing’. I argue that her pandemic curating – focusing on space, synchronicity and presence – reveals values for post-pandemic curating, offering strategies for confronting exclusionary power relations in South Africa and elsewhere.