SASCIA BAILER is a researcher, writer, art worker and curator working at the intersection of care, contemporary art, and structural change.

RESEARCH

Her practice-based PhD at the Zurich University of the Arts and the University of Reading examined the ambigous relationships between curating and care (completed in March ´2024). Her dissertation is was published as a book with the transcript in November 2024: “Caring Infrastructures. Transforming the Arts Through Feminist Curating” (available in print and open access). She is regularly invited to develop artistic/curatorial concepts for public programming, to give workshops and lectures, and to form part of panel discussions, podcasts, and moderated conversations (see Upcoming). She used to teach at the Post-Graduate Programme in Curating, and continues to give individual classes and mentoring sessions at ZDHK.

Installation view, Bodies of Ambivalence, 146 Contemporary, Hamburg. Credit: Marcia Breuer.

CURATORIAL PRACTICE

As an independent curator, Sascia Bailer curates for institutions, off-spaces, and within collectives. She recently curated “Bodies of Ambivalence” at 146 Contemporary Hamburg, and is currently part of the exhibition team of Biennale für Freiburg 3. Together with Didem Yacizi, she curated the exhibitions “On the Horizon:Care” at GEDOK Stuttgart (November 2024) and “Mothers*, Warriors, and Poets: Care as Resistance” at StadtPalais Stuttgart (May-July 2023), and now forms part of the Mothers*, Warriors and Poets Collective. As Artistic Director 2019/20 at the Arthur Boskamp-Stiftung she developed a participatory program that focused on care, aiming to connect, support and provide visibility for unpaid and undervalued private care-work. With Soft Agency she co-curated the 4^thedition of the New Alphabet School on Caring at Haus der Kulturen der Welt. In 2017, she curated the exhibition URGENCIA TERRITORIAL at the Sheila Johnson Design Center in NYC, which brought together research, design and activist projects towards social justice for Mercado San Roque in Quito, Ecuador. Sascia Bailer has worked internationally within the arts, including at MoMA PS1, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics (“Art and Social Justice Working Group”). 

Installation view, “Mothers*, Warriors, and Poets: Care as Resistance,” StadtPalais Stuttgart, 2023. Credit: Julia Ochs.

Installation view, On the Horizon: Care, Gedok Galerie Stuttgart, 2024. Credit: Julia Ochs.

WRITING & EDITING

Dr. Sascia Bailer is the author of the monography “Caring Infrastructures. Transforming the Arts Through Feminist Curating” (transcript, 2024), the article “Care for Caregivers: Curating against the Care Crisis” (in: “Curating with Care“, ed. Elke Krasny and Lara Perry, Routledge, 2023) and of the publication “Curating, Care, and Corona”(Arthur Boskamp Press, 2020). She is the co-editor of the anthology „Letters to Joan“, in which critical thinkers and artists exchanged thoughts on care during the pandemic with care ethics scholar Joan Tronto (co-edited with Rosario Talevi and Gilly Karjevsky). She co-edited the artist publication WHAT WE COULD HAVE BECOME. Reflections on Queer-Feminist Filmmaking by Malu Blume (Onomatopee, 2021) and Re-Assembling Motherhood(s). On Radical Care and Collective Art as Feminist Practices by Maternal Fantasies (Onomatopee, 2021).

ACADEMIC BACKGROUND & FELLOWSHIPS

She holds a PhD in “Practice in Curating” from the University of Reading and the Zurich University of the Arts, an MA in “Theories of Urban Practice” from Parsons School of Design and a BA in “Communication and Cultural Management” from Zeppelin University. Her scholarly and curatorial work has been supported by several grants and fellowships, including the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (SWW DTP), the German National Merit Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes), the Provosts Scholarship from Parsons, a “Graduate Student Fellowship for Art and Social Justice” by the Vera List Center for Art and Politics in New York, and doctoral funding from the British Arts & Humanities Research Council (South West & Wales Doctoral Training Partnership)…