Renée Mussai is a London-based curator and scholar with a special interest in African and diasporic lens-based visual arts practices. She is Senior Curator and Head of Curatorial & Collection at Autograph, where she has worked for almost two decades, advocating for a diverse constituency of contemporary artists and co-commissioning a range of artistic programmes.
She lectures regularly on photography, visual culture, and curatorial activism and her art writing has been published in several monographs and anthologies including by TATE, Aperture, and NkA. Mussai is also Research Associate at the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre, University of Johannesburg; Associate Lecturer at University of the Arts London, and regular guest curator and former Fellow at the Hutchins Centre for African & African American Research at Harvard University.
Images: from Ope Lori's commission, The Lines Between Us / I, Becoming You, 2020. Film, © and courtesy the artist, commissioned by Autograph for Care | Contagion | Community – Self & Other: 1 [detail] and 2) Film stills from The Lines Between Us, 2020. Film, 16' 11".
3) Renée Mussai, with Zaki by Zanele Muholi, 2021. Courtesy Renée Mussai.
Autograph is a place to see things differently. Since 1988, we have championed photography that explores issues of race, identity, representation, human rights and social justice, sharing how photographs reflect lived experiences and shape our understanding of ourselves and others.