Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Paz Ponce (ES, 1985) is an art historian and curator working in Berlin. Her practice explores curation as a form of care and collective memory, with a focus on community-building, participation, and cross-cultural exchange (EU & Latin America). She has extensive experience designing public programmes that integrate artistic research, civic engagement, and interdisciplinary methodologies, from sound walks to decolonial narratives. As an organiser/producer, she initiated several advocacy/project platforms focused on diversity: insurgencias.net (activist positions from Latin America), neue häute e.V. (community practices & social choreographies) Organismendemokratie e.V. (rights for all living beings). As a distribution / consultant for performing arts she works with choreographer Sheena McGrandles. She is currently Curator of Public Programmes & Outreach at TA T - Tieranatomisches Theater - an exhibition space, stage, and laboratory for curatorial practices within the Center for Culture Techniques at Humboldt University in Berlin. In this institutional context, she brings an eco-feminist approach to curating, informed by her work across performing arts, museum studies, visual culture and philosophy of science. Her curatorial practice expands traditional frameworks, positioning curation as an environmentalist act, a mode of situated memory, and a form of activism. Through this lens, she engages in redistributing power, de-territorializing and reassembling narratives, reclaiming knowledge, embracing multi-vocality, queering the archive, fostering networked communities, and curating the present as it unfolds.
At Tieranatomisches Theater (TA T) — a laboratory for curatorial practices within Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin — I anchor long-term research inquiries that treat the curatorial as a situated, performative, and collective practice. Rooted in post-studio methodologies and critical institutionalism, my work explores two guiding questions: How can the curatorial revert back to the local scene? Is the process of imagining an institution more generative than becoming one? In response, I develop contextual, collaborative, and participatory formats that approach publics not as audiences, but as co-thinkers and co-constituents. I design the dramaturgy of programming with attention to tempo, intensity, and the relational unfolding of experience. I understand the curator as host, dramaturg, and custodian of relations — curating as hospitality, care, and the redistribution of power. TA T, as a historic Wissensarchitektur (architecture of knowledge), grounds my inquiry into how we spend time with research, and what forms of sociality it opens to. These questions guide how I choreograph encounters between people, histories, and ideas — with curating understood as the sharing of, and as, infrastructure. My practice is also shaped by long-term questions of sustainability in cultural work: How do we build (collective) structures that survive us, work without us, or stand the test of time? These concerns inform how I approach governance, archival care, and cooperation as modes of cultural production. Current project: anatomia publica - open stage for scientific, aesthetic and social research practices Applications open until JULY 20th 2025
2023/24 Sept/Feb. Workshop facilitator / NODE CENTER FOR CURATORIAL STUDIES - ONLINE. 2 Workshops (16 Stunden): grant writing for curators and artists 2020 Feb-July Lecturer of the MA professionalization program for emerging artists PPAE / NODE CENTER FOR CURATORIAL STUDIES - ONLINE. 2 teaching modules (12 hours): writing and communication of artistic practice 2019 Jun-Oct Lecturer in the curation and exhibition management specialization program / NODE CENTER FOR CURATORIAL STUDIES - ONLINE. 3 teaching modules (75 hours): introduction to curatorial practice and the role of the curator / creation of a curatorial concept and research / communication in curatorial practice 2019 Mar-Jun Lecturer of the MA professionalization program for emerging artists PPAE / NODE CENTER FOR CURATORIAL STUDIES - ONLINE. 2 teaching modules (12 hours): writing and communication of artistic practice 2018 Jan-Feb Lecturer in the curation and exhibition management specialization program / NODE CENTER FOR CURATORIAL STUDIES - ONLINE. 1 teaching module (25 hours): communication in curatorial practice 2017 Nov-Dec. Lecturer: “Writing and Communication in Curatorial Practice” Module VII of NODE CENTER INTERNATIONAL CURATORIAL PROGRAM | ONLINE STUDIES. 25 hours. 2017 June Lecturer: “Conception of Curatorial Projects” Module II of NODE CENTER INTERNATIONAL CURATORIAL PROGRAM | ONLINE STUDIES. 25 hours. 2017 Febr-April Lecturer: “ Communication for artists” Module III of the Professional Program for Emerging Artist, Node Center Curatorial Studies Online, Berlin. 25 Hours. 2016 April-May Lecturer: “Curatorial Grammar: Conception of curatorial projects” II Module of the Diploma in Curatorial Studies, Node Center Curatorial Studies Online, Berlin. 25 Hours. 2015 Juni-Juli “Curatorial Grammar: Conception of curatorial projects” II Module of the Diploma in Curatorial Studies, Node Center Curatorial Studies Online, Berlin. 25 Hours.
Coordinator of student’s projects of NODE CENTER INTERNATIONAL CURATORIAL PROGRAM | ONLINE STUDIES. Directed by Perla Montelongo. Coordinated by Paz Ponce y Berta Díez. With co-lecturers: Juan Curto, Valentina Montero, Priscila Clementti, Claudio Bueno, Paz Ponce, Iohanna Nicenboim, Ana Fernández Osorio, Joanne Pouzenc.
neue häute e.V. - non-profit culture association founded in 2020, by a Berlin collective of artists & curators. During 2020-2023 it run ACaU: a cooperative café, community kitchen and project space at Uferstudios in Berlin-Wedding. Web: https://neuehaeute.org *Artistic co-directors are: Silke Bake, Sheena McGrandles, Paz Ponce *NGO Manager: Paz Ponce, Gaby Hundertmark. *Associate founding members: Kitti Acosta-Zsiga, Diego Agulló, Silke Bake, Shelley Etkin, Sheena McGrandles, Paz Ponce, Gabriel Vallecillo, Jo Vávra, Akiko Watanabe. NGO Project's CV produced & curated by Paz Ponce: AMAZONA / A-Zone Cyborg by Andressa Cantergiani Interdisciplinary dance research project Supported by: the NATIONAL PERFORMANCE NETWORK - STEPPING OUT, funded by the Minister of State for Culture and Media within the framework of the initiative NEUSTART KULTUR. Assistance Program for Dance. / Berlin Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa Sponsors: xm:lab experimental media lab / Hochschule der Bildende Künste Saar; Onassis AiR / Onassis Foundation. Januar - December 2022 AMAZONA or a dance of resistances Studio + research program with Andressa Cantergiani Frame & support: Fellowship Weltoffenes Berlin 2022 / Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa November 2021 - November 2022 ::.LIMINAL Transdisciplinary choreography & an expanded cinema experience by Gabriel Vallecillo Márquez Funded by: NPN Joint Adventures. 14.08.21 , 04.09.21 Desviarios Collaborative Landscape laboratory & Walks in Volkspark Humboldthain With: Manuela García Aldana, Julia Mensch, Pilar Millán, Marco Montiel Soto, Marcela Moraga, Ela Spalding Supported by the Bezirkskulturfonds and in cooperation with the Department of Art, Culture and History of the District Office Mitte of Berlin 2020-2024 Volunteer fundraiser/producer PLAY! - creative program for Ukrainian children fleeing from war & and their parents. >> please support & donate here: https://playberlin.org/
Between 2019 and 2022 I worked for the transnational EU project: Curating in Context, after the invitation of Tanzfabrik, the Berliner partner of this network. The project “Curating in Context” is supported by Erasmus +, EU programme for education, training, youth, and sport. Throughout the project’s lifetime three intellectual outputs were developed. I contributed to co-design the Intellectual Output 2: Online Learning Platform. My role in this task was to accompany all partner meetings and conceptualize a way to mediate the input of the 4 partner institutions / learning contexts to help distribute the knowledge to wider audiences. Web: https://curatingincontext.com Partners & collaborating participants of this network: From ADA Zagreb representatives and guests : Goran Sergej Pristas, Goran Pavlic, Jasna Žmak Tena Bosnjakovic; DOCH Stockholm representatives and guests: Christofer Fredriksson, Martin Sonderkamp, Kristine Slettevold, Tove Salmgren, Anna Efraimsson; From Tanzfabrik Berlin representatives and guests: Zoé Duflot and Gisela Müller (Tanzfabrik), Silke Bake (Tanzfabrik/independent curator), Kirsten Maar (Frei University Berlin), Maria de la Paz Ponce (independent curator, Berlin), from Lokomotiva representatives and guests: Biljana Tanurovska Kjulavkovski, Slavcho Dimitrov (Koalicija Margini, Skopje), Kristina Lelovac (FDU/Tiiiit, Skopje) and Ivana Vaseva (FRU, Skopje). Together with Silke Bake, Kirsten Maar and Gisela Müller, I co-curated & organized the week program for the 5th Network partner’s meeting in Berlin, 6th-10th September 2021. https://curatingincontext.com/timeline/berlin/ Guest lecturer at SKOPJE SUMMER SCHOOL CURATING IN CONTEXT / PUBLIC DISCUSSION / ARTISTS AND CURATORS TALKS / COLLECTIVE CURATING OR CO-CURATORIAL COLLABORATIVE PROCESSES / 25th August-15th September 2020. “Curating in context” was co-curated by Biljana Tanurovska–Kjulavkovski and Slavcho Dimitrov. Link: https://curatingincontext.com/intro-summer-school/
I founded ¡n[s]urgênc!as - insurgencias.net as a Berlin-based curatorial platform for socially engaged artistic practices and activist positions from Latin America. The initiative brings together artists, researchers, and cultural agents working at the intersection of aesthetics and political imagination. Through exhibitions, conversations, publishing, and collaborative formats, the platform creates a space for situated dialogue and translocal alliances — foregrounding feminist, decolonial, and post-migrant perspectives. insurgencias.net functions as a tool for visibility, critical exchange, and solidarity-building between Latin American diasporas and Berlin's broader cultural field. 2022: “AMAZONA or a dance of resistances” Studio + Research Program with Andressa Cantergiani (BR) Supported by: Fellowship Weltoffenes Berlin 2022 & Uferstudios 2021: networking & culture mapping program between Berlin and Salvador de Bahia. Supported by Kreativ-Transfer funds. Cooperation with Intervalo Fórum de Arte (Federal University of Bahia) 2019: "Ecologies of protest" Studio + Research Program with Gabriel Vallecillo Márquez (HN) A cooperation between Agora Collective e.V. & ZK/U Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik Supported by: Fellowship Program “Weltoffenes Berlin” 12-14.09.2019: Public program at Uferstudios. With: Gabriel Vallecillo, Julia Mensch , Michelle-Marie Letelier (Chile), moderated by Paz Guevara (Chile). As remote guests: YAMA Theater Collective (joining from Ecuador), Paola Ospina (joining from Colombia). As workshop facilitators: GA Estudio (Tomás García de la Huerta & Xaviera Gleixner, Chile). 2018: a professional orientation program & networking event between Latin American artists and representatives of the Berlin artistic scene. Organized by AGORA Collective e.V. Supported by “Weltoffenes Berlin 2018“, in collaboration with Daniela Labra and Kap Hoorn *Essay by Sebastián Eduardo: https://insurgencias.net/nsurgencias2018-essay-by-sebastian-eduardo/