Zoe Black

Zoe Black (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Hine, Pākehā) is the Deputy Director of Objectspace and she has been working in galleries for the past ten years. Her curatorial practice has focussed on community development and advocating for critically under-represented craft and object art forms.

She is currently Norwegian Crafts’ Curator in Residence, working on projects that create a dialogue between Indigenous making practices in Aotearoa and Sápmi.

What does leadership look like to you?

Zoe: For me, leadership is creating a space that upholds the mana and strength of individuals and recognising when collective support is needed. Being attune to how we can work together to enhance each other. It’s also very much about stepping aside for others to shine.

How does your community show up in your practice?

Zoe: We are lucky to be surrounded by an active and passionate community of designers, architects and makers at Objectspace but my work over the past few years has focused on developing our programme to be more reflective of making practices not traditionally seen within these fields, but should be. Through this work I’ve been lucky to work with inspiring makers that are creating in a multitude of ways – sometimes in their living rooms, sometimes in community halls, sometimes in Marae. Developing relationships with these makers means often work comes into the gallery but I’m lucky to also be able to support practice development in other more meaningful ways too.