Daphne Y. Chu

March 19, 2026. 'An Espresso with...Daphne Chu' @daphneychu I am thrilled to publish my interview with Daphne Chu, Curator @ikongallery in Birmingham. We spoke about detours, deep listening, and what it means to rebuild yourself in a new place. Daphne's story, from being a studio manager for Lee Mingwei across numerous exhibitions to curating the 'Break the Mould' opening at Ikon this March, is one of those authentic, honest conversations that resonate with me and, hopefully, with readers. Thank you, Daphne, for your time, kindness and interest in having this interview for An Espresso with... Link in bio 🔗 /blog/daphne-chu #AnEspressoWith #Curating #Birmingham #ContemporaryArt #ArtInterview #Sortytelling #Collaboration

偷得浮生半日閒

Last week to catch Thread the Loom, with works woven on the loom now installed in the gallery, alongside the @ikonyouthprogramme x @_hospitalrooms Weaving Showcase! The persistent clack clack clack of the AVL dobby loom in the weaving studio, activated by weavers and artists Chantelle Folarin, Mahawa Keita, Clare Langford, Andrée Walker, Theo Wright, and Gugan Gill, lends itself to the many mythologies around weaving: Nüwa mending the broken sky with melted colourful stones, Spider Grandmother spinning the world into existence… The residencies are sustained by the knowledge and generosity of Birmingham City University @textilesbcu colleagues Zoë Hillyard and Sheila Bennett, with Hazel Cullen, Lara Gembarska and Holly Trevis in the weaving studio. Much gratitude to artists Raisa Kabir, Alis Oldfield, Bharti Parmar, Dinah Prentice and Su Richardson & Birmingham Museums Trust and University Collections, University of Birmingham (Clare, Jenny, Anna and Dan) who have shared works and practices with us. Together, they invite us to reflect on the making of worlds—with materials, in community, in learning how to be ourselves and with one another, and finding our place within this vast universe. Thread the Loom is the second in a trilogy of exhibitions centred on craft, art school pedagogies and contemporary art practices, with support from @jerwood_foundation Cotton Textiles Research Trust, The Saintbury Trust and @freelandsfoundation As ever, this project is held together by many hands, with care and support from Amrit Sanghera and @ikongallery colleagues, programmes developed by Will Kew and Rosie Abbey alongside artists Gugan Gill and Nilupa Yasmin. As Will aptly describes: “The gallery is a classroom!” And in this classroom, our work is never finished...as Ursula K. Le Guin reminds us, “There are still seeds to be gathered, and room in the bag of stars.” ✨🧵⁠ ⁠ ⁠ ⁠ ⁠ ⁠ 🫶🏼 @ceramicpatchwork @hlc_designs @larag.textiles @_holstextiles @plus.elements @mansading_designs @awlwovens @weavingman @gugan.gill @raisa_kabir_textiles_ @alisoldfield @bharti.parmar.studio @melanie.pocock.9 @linzi_a_s @nickduxburyfine.art @willkewpottery @rosieabbey @nilupayasmin_

Many thanks to Aephie and Ingvar for their generous hospitality—welcoming me into their home, sharing Iceland with me, driving me everywhere, feeding me and preparing celebrations for my birthday. It was especially moving to be sung happy birthday by friends and dearest friends of friends. In this particular Icelandic version, during the final few verses, there was a pause: everyone stopped, looked around, then applauded, which Ingvar later explained was usually where you would include the person’s age. Since no one knew mine, it remained a mystery—but no matter, still applause, still hurrah! Fitting for the unknown I’m quietly, curiously gliding into. Iceland in May was just as delightfully unpredictable: rain, snow, hail, sun, clouds and rainbows…A generous, unruly blessing for the path ahead! 🩰🪩🫧 📷: @ingvar_haukur @aephie_huimi

Sometimes you are entrusted with projects—ones with complexities and histories that precede you—and your task is to shepherd them through these final moments before they are delivered into the world. With the exhibitions of Mahtab Hussain and Htein Lin, I am grateful to have had more time to sit with the work and the care, patience and support of colleagues @melanie.pocock.9 @linzi_a_s @danitariel @aminyosefi @nickduxburyfine.art and many others who have carried and guided both projects through to today. Although this is the final day for both exhibitions, I know that it is only the beginning of what is to come...  One weekend, earlier in the run of Mahtab‘s show, I slipped into the gallery to observe visitors. That day, a mother and her young son were seated on the bench, watching ’Here is the Brick.‘ They sit through its entirety, all the while the mother gently explains things to her son. I cannot hear her words.  How does one put into words pain, heartbreak, and that immense yearning to belong—intermingled with ambivalence—to a seven-year-old? How does one explain our capacity to wound in anger or in fear? I think of the poet Naomi Shihab Nye, calling her father, talking around the news, how ’it is too much for him,‘ and how ’neither of his two languages can reach it.‘ But there, standing quietly behind this mother and her young son, I am grateful to her for trying. Perhaps, in trying—reaching, looking and not turning away—we come just a little bit closer... Gently looking forward to more from Hussain & Gunaratne ✨ @mahtabhussain @guy.gunaratne

Delighted to share that I’ve joined Ikon Gallery in Birmingham as Curator 💛✨ It is such an honour to be part of this incredible institution, renowned for its commitment to the arts and building meaningful relationships with artists and audiences! Looking forward to collaborating with and learning from the team, along with the artists, makers and thinkers who bring these projects to life & connecting with the vibrant community here in Birmingham and beyond…Stay tuned for upcoming exhibitions and projects! — Posted @withregram • @ikongallery We caught up with the new members of Ikon’s Exhibitions team: Daphne Chu, Curator and Amrit Sanghera, Curatorial Fellow (supported by the Frieze x Deutsche Bank Emerging Curators Fellowship). ⁠ ⁠ Read our latest blogpost (Link in bio.)⁠ ⁠ @friezeofficial @deutschebankart @deutschebank @deutschebankwealth ⁠ ⁠ ⁠ ⁠ #ContemporaryArt #FriezeLondon #DeutscheBankArtCulture

Thanks so much to Steph Huang @theinvisibleisland for generously sharing her practice and thoughts with me in @artasiapacific Issue 140 Sep/Oct 2024 (Where I Work; one page excerpt here) before the installation and opening of exhibition ‘See, See, Sea’ at Tate Britain, on view to 5 January 2025. Since then, I have been thinking about this dance between painting and photography, artist and viewer & the gap of a single stone which air can travel through, but also how glass and the sea refracts and holds so much light and life… This year is Huang’s busiest yet with the next few upcoming shows at @projectseek_hongfoundation and @eseacontemporary - Catch them if you are in London, Taipei or Manchester! 🐚🫧

Many thanks to Shiloh Hsi-Lun Chen @hsilun for these images from a beautiful evening celebrating love! ✨💖 Touch and Swipe was organized together with Valentine Umansky and Bea Garcia-Velasco, with support from Hannah Gorlizki and the Tate film team. The screening featured five short films from artists Michael Snow, Marge Monko, Maryam Tafakory, Dagmar Schürrer, and Gabriel Abrantes, with writer Aifric Campbell moderating an insightful conversation that drew on voice, artificial intelligence, intimacy, and trust in today’s world.

Delighted to share Touch & Swipe, a culmination of my placement at Tate Modern on Wednesday 14 February evening at Starr Cinema…Join us in celebrating love if you are in London! ✨💖 The screening will showcase five short films by artists Michael Snow, Marge Monko, Maryam Tafakory, Dagmar Schürrer, and Gabriel Abrantes, exploring love in all its complexity through uncanny love encounters, decentering the human, and imagining other ways of bonding and connecting. Heartfelt thanks to the artists, and writer Aifric Campbell, who will be moderating the conversation, and dearest @valentine.umansky and @bea.garciavelasco along with Hannah Gorlizki and the Tate team who have worked tirelessly with me on this film screening and my time at Tate, and dear @goldsmithsmfacurating colleagues, tutors, and professors for supporting the placement…Hope to see you there!

“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” — Zora Neale Hurston

A quick hop to Torino to support Sonic Blossom installation and rehearsals before heading home for the summer… Come experience the bloom if you are in Torino! 🌸 — Posted @withregram • @mao_torino 🎶 Dal 6 maggio vi aspettiamo per scoprire Sonic Blossom, la performance partecipativa di Lee Mingwei. Sarà visibile solo per un mese ed è parte dell'evoluzione della mostra Buddha10. Frammenti, derive e rifrazioni dell’immaginario visivo buddhista. Per cinque settimane nelle sale del museo si avvicenderanno sette cantanti della Scuola di musica vocale da camera di Erik Battaglia del Conservatorio “Giuseppe Verdi”, selezionati e formati da Lee Mingwei in collaborazione con lo stesso professor Battaglia. Fra tutti i visitatori che incontreranno, ne sceglieranno uno a cui offrire in dono un Lied di Schubert; se questa persona accetterà l’offerta, sarà condotta nel Salone Mazzonis al primo piano e avrà inizio la performance. Le esibizioni sono strettamente legate alla partecipazione dei visitatori e si svolgeranno: ✔️martedì, mercoledì e giovedì dalle ore 15 alle ore 17 ✔️venerdì, sabato e domenica dalle ore 11 alle ore 13 e dalle ore 15 alle ore 17. #buddha10 #mao_torino #leemingwei #sonicblossom

During breakfast these past few months, I have been sitting with Pema Chödrön’s When Things Fall Apart, a book that has accompanied me through grief, loss, heartbreak, and will no doubt see me through many, many more. Most days I take in only a few sentences… These days, I have been leafing through David Whyte’s Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words. Today, thinking about Yahui, this passage takes hold: “Solace is a direct seeing and participation; a celebration of the beautiful coming and going, appearance and disappearance of which we have always been a part. Solace is not meant to be an answer, but an invitation, through the door of pain and difficulty, to the depth of suffering and simultaneous beauty in the world that the strategic mind by itself cannot grasp nor make sense of. To look for solace is to learn to ask fiercer and more exquisitely pointed questions, questions that reshape our identities and our bodies and our relation to others. Standing in loss but not overwhelmed by it, we become useful and generous and compassionate and even amusing companions for others. But solace also asks us very direct and forceful questions. Firstly, how will you bear the inevitable that is coming to you? And how will you endure it through the years? And above all, how will you shape a life equal to and as beautiful and as astonishing as a world that can birth you, bring you into the light and then just as you are beginning to understand it, take you away.” Wishing you a safe journey to the great beyond, dear Yahui…Thank you for having been in our orbit! 💫 #wangyahui @ya_hui_w_a_n_g