About



(english)
Victoria Carrasco is a Chilean-Canadian curator of contemporary art and moving image, born in Montréal. From 2008 to 2025, she held curatorial, managerial, and leadership positions at PHI (formerly known as PHI Foundation for Contemporary Art), where she played a key role in shaping the institution’s visitor experience strategy, developing internal professional growth initiatives, curating exhibitions, and expanding audiences by creating new exhibition formats of time-based media and performances programs. 

Her curatorial practice is grounded in research and centers on practices in contemporary art, developed through close collaboration with artists. Her institutional experience reinforces an expertise of exhibition-making and the dynamics between artwork, space, and audience—emphasizing accessibility, engagement, and critical reflection. She remains attuned to the social, cultural, and spatial contexts in which art is produced and experienced, and is committed to its critical and transformative potential that lives on after outside of the art gallery setting. ⁠

Carrasco curated REMEMBER, PERFORM, FORGET: Binding Space Through Utopia - with Kerstin Honeit, The Society of Affective Archives, and Rodolfo Andaur in 2023, co-curated with Cheryl Sim, the exhibition Larry Achiampong: Relic Traveller in 2022, the performance Dora García: Two Planets Have Been Colliding for Thousands of Years in 2021, and have worked with international, national and local artists in Montreal and organizations on the presentation of screenings and performances, moderated roundtables, and hosted artist talks and podcasts. 

Carrasco holds an MA in Performance Curation from the Institute of Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP) at Wesleyan University, a BA in Environmental Design from the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), and a BFA with a Concentration in Photography from Concordia University. In 2019, she was awarded the Ford Foundation ICPP Leadership Fellowship by Wesleyan University. She is also co-editor of the bi-annual publication TURBA: The Journal for Global Practices in Live Arts Curation and is on the Board of Directors of VIVA! Art Action and Centre des arts actuels SKOL. 


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(french)
Née à Montréal, Victoria Carrasco est une commissaire canadienne d’origine chilienne. De 2008 à 2025, elle a occupé les postes de commissaire, de gestion et leadership à PHI (anciennement Fondation PHI pour l'art contemporain), où elle a joué un rôle clé dans l'élaboration de la stratégie d'expérience des visiteurs de l'institution, la création d'initiatives de développement professionnel interne, le commissariat d'expositions et l'élargissement des publics par le développement de nouveaux formats d'exposition de programmes de médias temporels et performances.

Sa pratique curatoriale est ancrée dans la recherche et se concentre sur les pratiques de l'art contemporain, développées en étroite collaboration avec des artistes. Son expérience institutionnelle renforce son expertise en réalisation d'expositions et la dynamique entre l'œuvre d'art, l'espace et le public, privilégiant l'accessibilité, l'engagement et la réflexion critique. Elle demeure à l'écoute des contextes sociaux, culturels et spatiaux dans lesquels l'art est produit et expérimenté, et s'attache à son potentiel critique et transformateur qui perdure au-delà du cadre des galeries d'art.

Carrasco a été commissaire de SE SOUVENIR, PERFORMER, OUBLIER: relier l’espace par l’utopie - avec Kerstin Honeit, La Société des archives affectives (Fiona Annis and Véronique La Perrière M) et Rodolfo Andaur en 2023, co-commissaire avec Cheryl Sim de l'exposition Larry Achiampong: L’explorateur de reliques en 2022 et de la performance Dora García: Two Planets Have Been Colliding for Thousands of Years en 2021. Elle a également collaboré avec des artistes et des organismes internationaux, nationaux et locaux à Montréal pour la présentation de projections et de performances, animé des tables rondes et animé des conférences et des balados.

Elle est titulaire d’une maîtrise en commissariat de la performance de l’Institute of Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP) de l'Université Wesleyan, d’un baccalauréat en design de l’environnement de l’Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM) et d’un baccalauréat en beaux-arts avec concentration en photographie de l’Université Concordia. En 2019, l’Université Wesleyan lui a décerné la bourse de Leadership ICPP de la Fondation Ford. Elle est également co-éditrice de la publication semestrielle TURBA: The Journal for Global Practices in Live Arts Curation et siège au conseil d'administration de VIVA! Art Action et du Centre des arts actuels SKOL.




Larry Achiampong: Relic Traveller

Exhibition, September 9 to January 9, 2022, PHI Foundation.



Larry Achiampong, Relic 1 (production still), 2017. 4K colour video with stereo sound © Larry Achiampong. Courtesy of the artist and Copperfield, London

For Larry Achiampong’s first major solo exhibition in the Americas, the PHI Foundation presents Relic Traveller, a large-scale, multidisciplinary project ongoing since 2017. Taking the form of a series of immersive installations specially conceived for the Foundation’s spaces and for the city of Montréal, this exhibition is composed of sculpture, images, film, sound, and a public art component.

Through his futuristic alter ego, Achiampong is an archivist, collecting connections to his roots and gathering together the voices of collective memory to rethink colonialism, postcolonialism, Africanism, and Pan-Africanism. These reflections generate a unique vocabulary that problematizes and resists current discourses and trends. What, and who, is marking and shaping history, and who is allowed to leave a trace? Achiampong’s experience of diaspora, the importance of family and genealogical roots, and the significance of preservation and imagination all contribute to his project of creating a universe for everyone. Relic Traveller builds on themes of lost testimony, fallen empire, and displacement, marking and questioning what is remembered and what will remain. A constantly evolving project, Relic Traveller speaks to the artist’s personal journey, which is presented as an archive and as documentation of his vision of the future.

The exhibition consists of three interrelated installations. The Relic Travellers’ Alliance: Assembly 1 & 2 (2021) is a brand-new work that introduces us to two major aspects of the artist’s cosmology: spacesuits and flags. The presentation of Achiampong’s specially designed spacesuits suggests a tension between the agency of a body in flight and resistance to the tenets of ethnographic display. The spacesuits are brought into conversation with the series of flags PAN AFRICAN FLAGS FOR THE RELIC TRAVELLERS’ ALLIANCE (2017-2021).

The Relic film series—comprised of Relic 0 (2017), Relic 1 (2017), Relic 2 (2019), and Relic 3 (2019)—is presented throughout the week in an alternating sequence. A new work, Reliquary 2 (2020), joins the series. Composed of animated sequences and heretofore unseen drone footage from Achiampong’s personal archive, this film is the artist’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdown that temporarily separated him from his two children. The films are screened alongside Achiampong’s original 2017 series of flag works, mentioned above, which are presented in a unique configuration. The flags will also be presented in an outdoor poster campaign, to be seen in specific locations around Montréal.

The exhibition will also feature Reliquary Conceptual Imagery (2020), a mural installation composed of illustrations from Achiampong’s film Reliquary 2. These images were created for the film by Wumi Olaosebikan, a.k.a. Wumzum, a professional illustrator, muralist, and animator based in London and a long-term collaborator and friend of the artist.

Both anticipating and responding to the present moment, Larry Achiampong’s works address race, class, history, and technology to imagine the future through a very personal lens. Even as our experience of time has been altered by the pandemic, and as certain historical inequalities have been made more visible, we too may be compelled to reflect on what is, and to envision, boldly, what is to come.

This program was conceived and presented at PHI (formerly known as PHI Foundation), curated by Cheryl Sim and Victoria Carrasco.

Larry Achiampong
Larry Achiampong’s solo and collaborative projects employ imagery, aural and visual archives, live performance, and sound to explore ideas surrounding class, cross-cultural, and post-digital identity. With works that examine his communal and personal heritage—in particular, the intersection between pop culture and the postcolonial position—Achiampong crate-digs the vaults of history. These investigations examine constructions of “the self” by splicing the audible and visual materials of personal and interpersonal archives, offering multiple perspectives that reveal entrenched sociopolitical contradictions in contemporary society.

Achiampong completed a bachelor’s degree in mixed-media fine art at the University of Westminster in 2005, and a master’s in sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art in 2008. In 2020, he was awarded a fellowship by the Stanley Picker Gallery in London, and received a Paul Hamlyn Foundation award in recognition of his artistic practice in 2019. He lives and works in Essex and was a tutor with the photography master’s program at the Royal College of Art between 2016 and 2021. He was shortlisted for the Jarman Award in 2021. Achiampong currently serves on the board of trustees at Iniva (the Institute of International Visual Arts), facilitating the formation of art policy in the UK and internationally. He also holds a seat on the board of trustees of the Elephant Trust. Achiampong is represented by C Ø P P E R F I E L D.


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