Dr Vera Mey
- Tutor (Research)
- Arts & Humanities MPhil/PhD
- Tutor (Research)
- Curating Contemporary Art MA
Vera Mey is an art historian and independent curator. She completed her PhD in History of Art & Archaeology from SOAS, University of London in 2023.
Vera’s curatorial practice looks at various interactions of art and area as they intersect with different social and political movements. She has a particular specialisation in Southeast Asian Modern and Contemporary Art.
Vera was on the founding curatorial team of the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, led by Professor Ute Meta Bauer, where she oversaw the Residencies programme, which brought together artists from around the world for a concentrated period of research. More recently, as an independent curator, she has co-curated and curated exhibitions in Amsterdam, Bangkok, Beijing, Berlin, Busan, London, New Zealand, Paris, Phnom Penh, Shanghai, Singapore, and Tokyo. This includes working on 'SUNSHOWER: Contemporary art from Southeast Asia 1980s to now' (2017) at the Mori Art Museum and National Art Centre Tokyo, which was the largest survey of Southeast Asian contemporary art to be exhibited and was recently Co-Artistic Director of the 2024 Busan Biennale.
Vera holds an at-large curatorial position as International Programme Manager at Te Tuhi in Aotearoa, New Zealand. She is also a Curatorial Research Fellow for Asia Triennial Manchester 2025, as part of the Manchester School of Art, Manchester Metropolitan University. Prior to the RCA, she was a Lecturer in Art Curating at the University of York and Guest Professor at Städelschule.
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Research interests
Vera Mey's Doctoral research, which she conducted with the perspective and research as a contemporary art curator, focused on the watershed event of the Bandung 1955 Asia Africa Conference. She explored how this event intersected with changes in artistic representation, particularly in the fields of critical regionalism and critical race studies in Southeast Asian modern and contemporary art. Her research, while rooted in Southeast Asia, often extends beyond its borders to its diaspora and other postcolonial contexts. She has an ongoing interest in questioning the contours of regionalism through conversations about the aesthetic forms of Asian and African liberation movements of the mid-20th century. Cultures of the Cold War era, remain an ongoing interest of hers.
More recent research for her position as Co-Artistic Director of the Busan Biennale 2024 examined the intersection between notions of Pirate Enlightenment, as articulated by the anarchist and anthropologist David Graeber (2023), and Buddhist Enlightenment, particularly in the context of South Korea. She hopes to expand on the above topics in future research examining the relationship between art and anticapitalism as well as examining different kinds of frameworks for interacting and understanding with material and visual culture.
Publications, exhibitions, other outcomes
Publications
Mey, V. and Pirotte, P. (2025) 'Resuscitate the Soul: Not the Body', in Title One, I Dreamt, Clara and Other Stories. Turin: Castello di Rivoli.
Mey, V. (2025) 'In the Shadow of Bandung', in Möntmann, N. (ed.) The Entire Story Starts Where – Connections and Exclusions of Translocal Positions. Berlin: Archive Books.
Mey, V. and Pirotte, P. (2024) Seeing in the Dark: Catalogue of the 2024 Busan Biennale. Busan: Busan Biennale.
Mey, V. (2023) 'Hiding in Plain Sight: Pio Abad and Bringing to Light Dark Histories', in McCarthy, D. (ed.) Ashmolean Now: Pio Abad. Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, pp. 93–99.
Mey, V. (2023) 'On Fieldwork', in Davis, S. (ed.) Nestling Thoughts. Aotearoa: Working Together, pp. 42–49.
Mey, V. (2022) 'Kanitha Tith', in Someone is Moving. Amsterdam: Singapore Art Museum, p. 33.
Mey, V. (2020) 'Unified yet one? A Continued Plea for Regionalist Art History in Southeast Asia', Mezosfera, (8), August.
Mey, V. and Findlay, S. (2020) 'On rubber time: becoming contemporary in Southeast Asia', Errant, (1), Autumn/Winter.
Mey, V. (2018) 'For Free', in Bauer, U.M. and Rujoiu, A. (eds.) Place. Labour. Capital. Milan: Mousse.
Mey, V. (2017) 'Were in this together', in A Year of Conscious Practice.
Mey, V. (2015) 'Amanda Heng', ArtReview Asia, May.
Mey, V. (2014) 'Asia hasn't moved but the world has moved on it: Moving on Asia: towards a new art network 2004–2013', Museum Worlds, 2.
Mey, V. (2012) 'New Zealand as another Asia', Art Asia Pacific, 81, November/December.
Selected Exhibitions
Co-Curator, Spectres of Bandung: A Political Imagination of Asia-Africa (Upcoming)
Co-Artistic Director, Seeing in the Dark, Busan Biennale 2024, South Korea
Curator, Elsewhere and Nowhere Else, 2022, Te Tuhi, Auckland, New Zealand
Curator, Trùng mù - endless, sightless, a solo exhibition of the Hans Nefken Award recipient Nguyen Phuong Linh, 2018, Bangkok Art and Cultural Centre
Co-curator, SUNSHOWER: Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia 1980s to Now, 2017, Mori Art Museum and National Art Centre Tokyo
Co-curator, Anywhere but here, 2016, co-curated with Melanie Mermod, BetonSalon Centre d’art et recherche, Paris
Co-curator, Singapore Art Archive Project @ SA SA BASSAC: Koh
Nguang How & Shui Tit Sing, 2016 co-curated with Melanie Mermod, SA SA BASSAC, Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Curator, Urban Aspiration, 2016, the Physics Room, Christchurch New Zealand
Curator, NTU CCA Residencies Programme, 2014 – 2016, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore
Co-Curator, The Disappearance, 2014, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore
Curator, In Spite of Ourselves: Approaching Documentary, 2012, ST PAUL Street Gallery and the Dowse Art Museum, New Zealand
Curator, The curatorial season, 2011, ST PAUL Street Gallery
External collaborations and activities
2016 onwards, Founding Editorial Collective member of Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia
2022 onwards, International Programme Manager, Te Tuhi
2022 onwards, Curatorial Fellow, Asian Art Roundtable
2024, Guest advisor and jury member, Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam