CURATION
As a curator, Dominic works with marginalised communities breaking down barriers to arts and culture in a socially engaged way. He has achieved this through working in partnership with arts and cultural organisations such as The Whitworth, Manchester Museum, Castelfield Gallery and HOME.
RECOVERIST CURATORS
This co-curated exhibition, featuring work from Francis Bacon, Tracy Emin and David Hockney, re-narrates artworks from the Whitworth collection through the lens of recovery from substance use. Winner of the Making a Difference Award for Social Responsibility.
AFRICAN OBJECTS: PSYCHOACTIVES, SPIRITUALITY & MENTAL HEALTH
Working with Manchester Museum’s Living Cultures collection, this project explored the intersection between African heritage, spirituality, and mental health, examining the question of how to return provenience to objects whose cultural identity has been stripped away by colonialism.
"We live in strange times. The world can be an overwhelming place. Many of us feel a disassociation and disconnection to who we are and where we come from. The discourse around substance use and mental health is primarily around pathology, that sickness originates from the individual, rather than a symptom of society without necessary care. This medical, and essentially western, model of understanding mental health and substance use does not take into consideration the significance of cultural and spiritual connection.
Before my role as curator on this project, I studied at the prestigious Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology at The University of Manchester and, as a person of colour in recovery with a long term mental health condition, I was interested in exploring the themes of substance use and mental health through an indigenous cultural lens. This volume is the culmination of participantary, processed led work informed by the personal histories of the individuals that have graciously brought themselves, and their stories, to this project.
At Portraits of Recovery we believe that taking an intersectional approach is the only way to truly understand recovery. Different communities navigate recovery differently, and within these communities exists individual, unique lived experience. These are the stories we wish to tell. Spirituality is an essential part of the recovery process and spiritual connection through our cultural heritage, community and to ourselves opens the door to new ways of understanding, and being, in the world."
Dominic Pillai,
Curator of Social Engagement at Portraits of Recovery
ANEW WAY TO PEEL AN ORANGE
Celebrated designer Joe Hartley and the ANEW recovery community presented ANEW Way to Peel an Orange, an ambitious exhibition of co-produced work developed during Hartley’s five-month residency with ANEW in Tameside (Greater Manchester, UK).
ARTEFACTS OF INTERACTION
This exhibition explored the interesection between neurodivergence and substance use through four large-scale co-produced paintings emerged from a series of workshops led by artist Will Belshah. The works are not only collaborative they are also a convergence of the five artists’ personal histories, artistic inquiry, and radical vulnerability.
LIMINAL ART LAB
Liminal art Lab (LaL) is a countercultural, intersectional curation project that nurtures creative innovation, artistic intervention and radical thought. LaL is a moveable, experiential laboratory where art, alchemy and anthropology can co-exist in the same moment.
PRESS
I LOVE MANCHESTER
PORTRAITS OF RECOVERY
