Curating with a Critical Lens
What stories do museums tell — and just as importantly, whose voices are left out? Exhibitions help shape how we understand history, culture, and even science.
Here, we share examples of exhibition design or curatorial solutions that confront issues like colonization, the privileging of Western knowledge, and the representation of neurodiverse artists. Most of these projects were developed in collaboration with M'Baraká, a Brazilian curatorial studio committed to critical, inclusive, and interdisciplinary approaches to exhibition-making.
Each case study explores how curatorial decisions can question historical biases, amplify marginalized voices, and invite new ways of seeing. From reinterpreting scientific authority to deconstructing colonial legacies, these exhibitions spark conversations about power, representation, and the politics of display.
Women's Knowledge: Resistance, Science, and the Peacock Flower
As part of the exhibition US/Knots: Arts and Science by Women (M'Baraká, XXX), we created The Witches' Herbarium — a space that explored the historical stigmatization of women as healers, midwives, and botanists while celebrating their contributions to science. The herbarium intertwined mythology, persecution, and scientific knowledge, revealing how women’s wisdom was systematically erased or discredited across different historical periods.
One of the most powerful stories presented in this section was that of enslaved women in Suriname who used botanical knowledge as a form of resistance. The naturalist Maria Sybilla Merian, during her travels in the 17th century, documented the use of the peacock flower (flor-de-pavão) by African and Indigenous women. In her writings, she noted that these women used the plant to induce abortions, refusing to bring children into a world of enslavement. This act of defiance was a radical assertion of bodily autonomy in a system that sought to control every aspect of their lives.
Merian herself defied the norms of her time. Born in 1647 in Germany, she pursued a career in natural history and illustration, left an unhappy marriage, and traveled to South America with her daughter — a rare and bold move for a European woman in her era. Her meticulous records of tropical flora and fauna, as well as her observations of Indigenous and African knowledge systems, positioned her as one of the first European naturalists to engage with non-Western perspectives on nature.
Yet, as Londa Schiebinger explores in Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World, the knowledge Merian documented was systematically excluded from European medical discourse. The botanical expertise of enslaved women — knowledge that was life-saving, deeply spiritual, and politically charged — was seen as dangerous and suppressed. European science absorbed plant specimens but rejected the wisdom that came with them, reinforcing a hierarchy of knowledge that privileged white, male, academic authority over experiential, Indigenous, and female expertise.
In The Witches' Herbarium, this story was presented alongside the broader history of the "witch" as a woman whose knowledge — whether medicinal, botanical, or spiritual — was deemed threatening and repressed. By placing the peacock flower alongside other plants historically linked to female healers, midwives, and persecuted women, the exhibition design underscored the persistence of gendered biases in science. The installation invited visitors to reconsider how knowledge is legitimized and who gets to be recognized as a scientist, healer, or intellectual.
Through this curatorial approach, The Witches' Herbarium made visible the long-standing erasure of women's knowledge while celebrating their resilience. It challenged audiences to rethink what counts as scientific authority and whose voices have been left out of the dominant narratives of history.
Semilla | Frø | Seed | Насіння
From Seed to Sustenance
A collaboration between Ikke i Rute and CkulturA, Semilla | Frø | Seed | Насіння is an audiovisual journey that explores bread as ritual, memory, and cultural document. Rooted in artistic research and experiential fieldwork across Denmark, Spain, and Ukraine (as remembered by Ukrainians in exile), the project traces the path of wheat from seed to sustenance—through image, sound, gesture, and story.
Blending ethnography with creative practice, we work alongside farmers, bakers, migrants, and memory-keepers to craft a living, multisensory archive. The project culminates in a traveling installation and publication that honors ancestral foodways and reimagines them through contemporary art.
Bread, in our hands, becomes a medium of storytelling, cultural resilience, and collective nourishment.
Project period: June 2025 — June 2026
Countries involved: Denmark, Spain, Ukraine
Partners: CkulturA (DK), local collaborators in all regions
Kend Dine Internationals
Inspired by the popular Instagram project Kend din by by historian Mathias Christian Stougaard, Kend Dine Internationals brings visibility to the everyday experiences of immigrants living in Denmark. Where Kend din by uncovers the hidden histories of Copenhagen, Kend Dine Internationals highlights the diverse and often overlooked stories of those who have made Denmark their home.
Launched as a digital storytelling initiative on Instagram, the project features interviews, short videos, and personal narratives that explore the challenges and joys of navigating a new culture — from learning Danish to finding moments of connection. With humor, vulnerability, and insight, these stories foster empathy and encourage dialogue between communities.
Alongside personal stories, the platform will share informative posts with statistics, cultural insights, and reflections on language, identity, and belonging in Denmark.
Whether as a standalone platform or a thread within broader Ikke i Rute programming, Kend Dine Internationals aims to cultivate a culture of openness — one post at a time.