Sophia Yadong Hao is Director & Principal Curator of Cooper Gallery, DJCAD, University of Dundee and a Visiting Professor at the University of Sunderland.
A curator, writer and editor, Hao’s practice appropriates a rhizomatic approach to situate the curatorial as a mode of critical inquiry directly engaging with culture and ‘the political’ as an open question. Hao has curated contemporary art projects internationally, notably NOTES on a return (2009), a re-contextualisation of performance art from 1980s Britain; Of Other Spaces: Where Does Gesture Become Event? (2016-2017) which evoked the ethos of feminism for an alternative politics in culture and society; and CURRENT: Contemporary Art from Scotland (2015-2021) a touring programme in China interrogating contemporaneity in a global capitalist context. Since 2021, Hao has conceived and curated The Ignorant Art School: Five Sit-ins Towards Creative Emancipation, a five phase exhibition programme examining histories and future possibilities of creative pedagogy as a radical emancipatory praxis emphasising knowledge as a collective social experience.
Founding editor of the art journal &labels, Hao’s publications include Of Other Spaces: Where Does Gesture Become Event? (2019), Hubs and Fictions: On Current Art and Imported Remoteness (2016, with Edgar Schmitz), A CUT A SCRATCH A SCORE (2015) and NOTES on a return (2010).
Sophia was a member of BAN’s steering group to 2022.
