Olivia Berkowicz

Olivia Berkowicz is a Polish-Swedish curator and researcher whose practice is concerned with archival phantoms and diasporic echoes. She explores the intersection of critical visuality studies and queer feminist theory, taking the form of sonic encounters, exhibitions, residencies and writing.

Together with Marianna Feher, she organises Tentative Transmits since 2019. Tentative Transmits is a discursive audio platform that explores memory, solidarity practices and post-socialist transitions in, and beyond, Central and Eastern Europe. At Rupert, Olivia will explore the reverberations of the 35th anniversary of the Baltic Way, focusing on strategies of sonic solidarities and minor radio histories as part of her research for the platform ‘Tentative Transmits’.

Olivia has previously been a resident at Cité international des arts, Paris (2021); Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart (2020-2021); and PRAKSIS, Oslo (2019). Since 2022 she has been working as curator of exhibitions at the Röhsska Museum of Design and Craft in Gothenburg, Sweden. Recent curated exhibitions include: Wang & Söderström, the Röhsska Museum in Gothenburg, Sweden (forthcoming 2025); Afaina de Jong, An(Other) Vernacular, Grafikens Hus in Södertälje, Sweden (2022); Alicja Wysocka: Lamentations, Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany (2021); co-curator of Lenke Rothman: Mending a Broken World, the Living History Forum, Stockholm and the Sörmland Museum, Sweden (2018-2019).

Conversation and Listening Session with Tentative Transmits & Meira Ahmemulić at Mint, Stockholm (2023). Photo by Jordana Loeb.

Olivia Berkowicz’s residency is funded by Culture Moves Europe.