LONDON.- The Photoworks board of trustees today announced Shoair Mavlian as Director of Photoworks.
Shoair, currently Assistant Curator at Tate Modern, will join the organisation in February. She will replace former Director, Celia Davies, who left in December after eight years working for Photoworks.
Matt Locke, chairman of the board of trustees, says, We are very pleased to welcome Shoair Mavlian to Photoworks. We ran an exhaustive recruitment process for the new Director, with a very high standard of international applicants. Shoair stood out with her combination of deep experience in commissioning photography, excellent networks and passion for supporting emerging practise. This is a fantastic opportunity for Shoair to work with the Photoworks team to develop an innovative and exciting programme of work, including projects such as the upcoming Jerwood/Photoworks Awards.
Shoair Mavlian says, I’m thrilled to be given the opportunity to lead an organisation I have admired for so many years. I look forward to working with the team, developing partnerships and supporting artists at local, national and international levels to connect new audiences with photography.
Shoair Mavlian is an assistant curator at Tate Modern, London, focusing primarily on photography. Since 2011 she has researched acquisitions for the international collection whilst curating exhibitions and displays across the museum. She curated the major exhibition The Radical Eye: Modernist Photography from the Sir Elton John Collection (Tate Modern, 2016), and Project Space: A Chronicle of Interventions (Tate Modern and TEOR/éTica, Costa Rica, 2014) and co-curated Shape of Light: 100 Years of Photography and Abstract Art (Tate Modern 2018), Conflict, Time, Photography (Tate Modern, 2014), and Harry Callahan (Tate Modern 2013). Shoair has also worked on many of the photography displays of the permanent collection including New Documentary Forms (2011), Lewis Baltz and Carl Andre (2012), Charlotte Posenenske and Ursula Schulz-Dornburg (2014), Close Up: Identity and the Photographic Portrait (2015), Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen (2016), Lynn Cohen and Taryn Simon (2017) and Dayanita Singh (2017).
Recent independent curatorial projects include the exhibition Don McCullin: Looking Beyond the Edge for Les Rencontres d'Arles, 2016 and In Flux exhibited at Getxo Photo 2017 and Kanellopoulos Cultural Centre, Greece, 2015.
Shoair has a background in fine art photography practice and the history of photography focusing on the twentieth century. She has a strong interest in photography relating to conflict and memory and emerging contemporary practice. Her independent writing is regularly featured in magazines and recent publications include Shape of Light: 100 Years of Photography and Abstract Art (forthcoming) and The Radical Eye: Modernist Photography from the Sir Elton John Collection (2016).
