Nur Shkembi

Independent Curator & Writer


Nur Shkembi is a Melbourne based curator, writer and emerging scholar. Nur has produced and curated over 150 events, exhibitions and community engagement projects. She was part of the core team establishing the Islamic Museum of Australia (2010 -2015), serving as the museum’s inaugural Art Director, Exhibitions Manager and foundation Curator. As a museum curator, Nur brought together artefacts, traditional art and contemporary art as a means for collective storytelling and as a provision for the individual narrative. She has served on numerous boards and committees within the arts sector including the Organisation Investment Program (OIP) for the Museums, Cultural Heritage and Cultural Development Advisory committee, the VicArts Visual Arts Advisory panel, as Chair of Theatre Funding and was appointed by the Department of Premiere and Cabinet as a Commissioner for the Creative State Commissions. Her arts writing is regularly featured in the, Artist Profile, fineprint, Crikey, un. Magazine, ReOrient, National Gallery of Victoria’s Gallery magazineand her curatorial essays are published in exhibition catalogues nationwide. Nur engages her independent curatorial practice nationally, recent exhibitions include: Waqt al Tagheer (ACE Open) Khalas! (UNSW Galleries), The Inner Apartment (Nishi Gallery and National Museum of Australia), We Are All Affected (Fairfield City Museum and Peacock Gallery) and as the curator of the T&M Salon at The Good Room, an independent gallery in Brunswick East for a year-long series of inter-related presentations and performances.

Nur is a member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA); the Historians of Islamic Art Association (HIAA); the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand (AAANZ); and is an advisory Board Member for the Australia Research Council funded multi-year art history project, Decentering Australian Art: Beyond the fixed canons of Australian art history. Nur was awarded a British Council Intersect fellowship in 2019 and was invited by the Australia Council for the Arts to represent Australia at the Dhaka Art Summit in February 2020.

Nur holds an MA from the Victorian College of the Arts and is currently undertaking as PhD in the Department of Art History at the University of Melbourne. Her research encompasses a newly established area of contemporary Islamic art in Australia which has been developed through her long time curatorial and research practice in contemporary Islamic art. Her research interests include representations of Orientalism and neo-Orientalism in contemporary art.

Website: http://nurshkembi.com/#about

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