Dr Karen Di Franco

Biography

Dr Karen Di Franco is Senior Lecturer, MA Curating and Collections and Programme Curator at Chelsea Space, Chelsea College of Arts, UAL. Her research and curatorial work frequently intersects with lesser-discussed art practices and histories — described through materials that complicate notions of archive, ephemera and the art collection. As such, her research and exhibition practices often focus on event and process-based forms with an emphasis on text and publishing. She has written and spoken on artists such as Carolee Schneemann, Nancy Holt and Constance DeJong, feminist archival methodologies, categorisation and linked open data — an area developed through her background in digital archiving.

Her educational background includes a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from the University of the West of England, an MA in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths, University of London and her AHRC funded PhD research thesis Embodied Iteration: Materialising the Language of Writing and Performance in Women Artists’ Publishing, 1968–1979, was a Collaborative Doctoral Partnership based between the University of Reading and Tate Britain.

Between 2021-25 she was Programme Leader, M.Litt Curatorial Practice (Contemporary Art) at Glasgow School of Art. She has taught across the fields of art practice, art history and writing, working with educational institutions such as the RCA, Goldsmiths, University of Reading and Leeds University. As an archivist and curator she has worked for public organisations such as Spike Island, the Contemporary Art Society, Diaspora-Artists Archive and Book Works.

Recent conferences and presentations include the paper, “ [..] a good lesson in accepting a duet for what it is”’ as part of the panel ‘Showing the Work: Feminist archival practice and exhibition’ in ‘Women in Revolt: Radical Acts, Contemporary Resonances at Tate Britain, organised by CREAM, University of Westminster and Tate Britain (2024). In the same year, Di Franco devised and co-convened the panel ‘Reproduction! Networks of Distribution in Archives and Collections of Publishing’, as part of the Annual Association of Art History Conference and presented at the at the workshop, British Artists' Magazines Into History, at Beam, Nottingham, organised and supported by British Art Studies, Paul Mellon Centre. Other presentations include the panel, Radical Forms in Printed Matter at the Paris Ass Book Fair, at Palais de Tokyo, Paris; the online panel event Relics, hosted by FACT, Liverpool and the panel ‘How to do things with an archive’ for the EASTdiscourses series of events at Norwich University of Art.