Growing Pains is an Amsterdam based initiative working on the crossroads of visual arts, publishing, conversation, education and human connection that supports women and non-binary artists. The project navigates the space between artist books, photobooks and children’s books exploring alternative registers for difficult conversations.

It was set up in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Growing Pains was founded by Agata Bar, Daria Tuminas and Zhenia Sveshchinskaya.

POSITIONING Growing Pains embeds its curatorial vision in the tradition of the educational turn in arts and design. Our curatorial values are focused on the interest in knowledge production within temporary and discursive modes of be-coming-together. We cherish the ephemeral, non-hierarchical, participatory nature of such events. We orient ourselves on the process and the immaterial paradigm, where the art mediation and the curatorial expressing itself through communicative situations and human connections is crucial.

At the same time, we stand for the multi-platform representation of works that can take ephemeral shapes like conversations, readings, slow forms of collective production, but also printed matter such as editions, zines, (printable) PDFs, books, or online formats like long-form editorial content or spacial expressions like exhibitions. We see these different aspects of our curatorial expressions as equal. Together, they constitute a constellation of elements that can be dynamic and change from project to project.

We lead our practice from the intersectional feminist point of view. We recognise the plurality of the experiences of being a woman according to race, class, sexual orientation, age and ability, as well as the plurality of female, trans, queer, and non-binary voices.

IMAGES
Images on the website are by Growing Pains, unless specified otherwise.

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