Reading International Symposium: What Can We Learn from Artists?
Introducing our speakers:
Alona Karavai, Lea Schleiffenbaum, Cecilie Bernts  and Pamela Grombacher, Paul O’Neill, Jessie Robertson
Alona Karavai is a cultural manager, curator and essayist, co-founder of project space Asortymentna kimnata, of residency house Khata-Maysternya and of media about art post impreza. Worked in contemporary art center IZOLYATSIA while it was based in Donetsk, lived and worked in Donetsk, (co)curated several site-specific projects in Ivano-Frankivsk. Since 2022 she has been dealing with urgent art residencies in Ukraine, evacuation of (private) collections and organization of Ukrainian contemporary art exhibitions in Europe. She was awarded the Kairos Prize in 2023, which is a European prize for cultural actors. She was also a fellow of the first cohort of the Socially Engaged Arts program. Key expert in the sector “Art and culture” in frames of the analytical project RES-POL and founder of the School of contemporary art fra fra fra. Since 2023 she has been working with the topic of ties and tension in the Ukrainian art community in Ukraine and abroad. She is working with topics of periphery(ies), absence and local art communities.
Lea Schleiffenbaum is an art historian and independent curator, currently pursuing her PhD at the University of Reading. Focusing on public art projects, her work engages with collaborative processes as well as the articulation of individual and collective needs and their reflection in contemporary art. As a mediator for the New Patrons, she realized projects with Sasha Waltz in Marl and Sol Calero in Schwarzheide. As a curator, she has worked with a range of institutions, including Weltkunstzimmer Düsseldorf, Marta Herford, and the Museum of Utopia and Everyday Life. Together with Friederike Fast, she curated the Lantz’scher Sculpture Park in Düsseldorf in 2022. She is currently working on a project with Lina Lapelytė in Eisenhüttenstadt.
Cecilie Bernts and Pamela Grombacher are co-directors of Juxtapose, an association for the artist-run in Aarhus, Denmark. Juxtapose launched in 2021 as Juxtapose Art Fair, a non-profit exhibition and professional gathering of artist-run spaces from Denmark and abroad. The aim of this event is to bring very different artist-run spaces together and exhibit them side-by-side – to “juxtapose” them – so we can better understand and celebrate the many ways in which artists contribute to the wider art ecology.
For the third edition in 2025, Juxtapose crossed out “art fair” from its title, to mark its transition to a more flexible association that works with the local artist-run scene in Aarhus in different ways.Beyond Juxtapose, Cecilie works with students and communication at the Jutland Art Academy, and Pam is residency coordinator for Malt AIR and project manager at Aarhus Center for Visual Art.
Dr Paul O’Neill is an Irish curator, artist, writer and educator. He is Artistic Director of PUBLICS, a curatorial agency and contemporary art organisation in Helsinki. He is the author of The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s)(MIT Press, 2012) and Beyond Caring: Para-hosting as Curatorial Escape (Floating Opera Press, 2025), and has co edited numerous influential anthologies on curating. His curatorial work includes more than 80 exhibitions internationally. The Paul O’Neill Archives (1993–2024) are held in the collection of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin. He has held senior teaching and research roles internationally and is a visiting professor at the Latvian Academy of Fine Arts.
Jessie Robertson is Curator of Exhibitions and Live Programmes at Modern Art Oxford where she has curated solo exhibitions and new commissions by Suzanne Treister, Frieda Toranzo Jaeger and Valerie Asiimwe Amani. Alongside this, she devises and delivers the live programme at Modern Art Oxford, focusing on interdisciplinary practice and platforming emerging performance in the city. As Curator (2023-present) and Assistant Curator (2019-2023) at Modern Art Oxford, Jessie has worked on exhibitions, publications and residencies for artists including Belkis Ayón, Jesse Darling, Carey Young, Marina Abramović and Ruth Asawa. She holds a PhD and MA in contemporary art history from The Courtauld Institute of Art.
21 January 2026, University of Reading, London Road Campus
>>> Tickets are free, but please book your place here