Sofia Steinvorth is a German-Costa Rican curator, writer and researcher based in Lisbon. She is the author of Knowledge Production in Visual Arts Organisations: A Case Study on the Triangle Network (2023). Her research and curatorial practice revolve around questions of cultural and curatorial infrastructure as well as artistic practices that develop through collective processes of knowledge production. Representation and mediation are recurring themes in her investigations driven by an interest in the cultural production of the Global South. Drawing on human geography and an interest in the processes that lead to the development of a sense of place, her projects are informed by practices that explore, reveal, and reshape the relations among people and their environments.

Between 2019 and 2020 she was part of CuratorLab - Konstfack's professional curatorial course under the theme "Socially Engaged Curating in Post-Democratic Times" in association with the Visible Project (Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto and Fondazione Zegna, Italy). In 2022 she was a curatorial resident at the Bag Factory Artists' Studios in Johannesburg as part of the TURN2 Programme, where she developed the project Many Hands Make Light Work (2022). Currently, Sofia is pursuing her PhD in Artistic Studies: Art and Mediation at the Art History Department of the Universidade NOVA de Lisboa with a scholarship from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT ). From a curatorial perspective attentive to socio-spatially engaged artistic and curatorial projects that work in and with their immediate localities through community-building processes, her research focuses on independent, artistic and curatorial emerging cultural structures from São Paulo. Throughout 2024 Sofia is a visiting researcher at the Post-Graduation Programme in Aesthetics and Art History (PGEHA) at USP in São Paulo.

Between 2017 and 2021, she was involved in the production of ELECTRA Magazine, a cultural quarterly published by the EDP Foundation in Lisbon, last as its editorial coordinator. Currently, in collaboration with Carlota Mir and Sara Alberani, she is editing the book Propositions on Translocal Solidarity (forthcoming, Milan and Berlin: Archive Books).

Curatorial Projects

Umfanekiso Uyopha Inkungu / An Image Oozes Mist

Phumulani Ntuli

UJ Art Gallery, Johannesburg

2024

Um Lugar Onde Pousar

Juliana Maia

lapa, Lapa, São Paulo

A Pele da Terra / The Skin of the Earth

Natália Loyola

Coletivo Amarelo, Lisboa

2022

Isidleke Sakhiwa Ngezinwele / A Nest is Built with Strands of Hair

Phumulani Ntuli (curatorial text)

Galería Nueva, Madrid

Many Hands Make Light Work

Wezile Harmans, Sandile Radebe, Joe Legate, Kutlwano Monyai and the community of resident artists at the Bag Factory Artist's Studios

Bag Factory Artist's Studios, Johannesburg

TURN2 Two-month Curatorial Research Residency

Bag Factory Artist's Studios, Johannesburg

2020

Atmospheric Conditions

Jabulani Maseko

4C's - From Conflict to Conviviality through Creativity and Culture, online exhibition

The Nature of this Room

Rosanna Helena Bach and Nuno Moreira

Lapso Galeria, Setúbal

2019

2018

Artivism=Capital

María Trabulo

Contemporânea Magazine, Portugal, special edition, co-curator

Notes on Curating Socially Engaged Art

CuratorLab final programme, online (co-curator)

CV

2025

Estudos para uma casa na árvore

Clarice Cunha and Manuela Costa Lima

lapa, Lapa, São Paulo

Curatorial Advocate at the Visible Temporary Parliament

Tequiografías by Daniel Godínez Nivón, Dar Jacir Centre for Art and Research by Emily Jacir and Carved to Flow by Otobong Nkanga

Hôtel de Ville, Paris

2018

Good Things Take Time...

Thoughts on Attention, Communication and Time in Relation to Collaborative Practices

Artachat, 32º East, Kampala

Triangle Network Forum: Maintenance

How Can We Bring in Funding When the Walls of Our Institutions Are Crumbling?

with Candice Allison and Joe Legate, online

organised by Rosie Hermon and the Triangle Network

Three-Day Writing Workshop for Young and/or Emerging Curators and Art Writers

Bag Factory Artist's Studios, Johannesburg

2021

Public Talk with Ramiro Guerreiro

A Dobradiça Festival, Mação, Portugal

Presentations / Workshops

2022

2020

Atmospheric Conditions (co-author)

Jabulani Maseko

Universidade Católica Portuguesa

About "A Rumble in the Jungle" by Jabulani Maseko (performance review)

4C's - From Conflict to Conviviality, through Creativity and Culture, online blog

The Rebirth of Feminine Times (interview)

Vandana Shiva

Electra Magazine, Issue 9, Summer 2020

EDP Foundation

The Nature of this Room (editor)

Rosanna Helena Bach and Nuno Moreira

independent publication

Rhythm & Reason: Learning from Arrythmia (book chapter)

À Volta da Viagem, Marília dos Santos Lopes and Luísa Santos (eds.)

Stolen Books

Kara Walker's Series Untitled (2002-2004)

Electra Magazine, Issue 11, Winter 2020/21

EDP Foundation

The Urbanist as Mediator

Electra Magazine, Issue 11, Winter 2020/21

EDP Foundation

2023

Knowledge Production in Visual Arts Organisations: A Case Study on the Triangle Network (author)

Universidade Católica Editora

Rest as Resistance: From Self-Care to Decolonial Narratives (book chapter)

Cultures of Silence: The Power of Untold Narratives, Luísa Santos (ed.)

Routledge

To Tear Down Oppressive Geometries (essay)

on Rita GT's performance 1919 (2019)

Nanograleria: onze actos (+1), Luísa Santos and Ana Fabíola Maurício (eds.)

Nanogaleria

2024

About Dinosaurs and Chameleons, or the Representational Role of Museums (book chapter)

Annals for Istrian and Mediterranean Studies, Series Historia et Sociologia, 34, 2024, 4

forthcoming

Propositions on Translocal Solidarity (co-editor)

Konstfack, Visible Project

Archive Books

Publications

2021

2019

2017

Through, From, To Latin America: Networks, Circulations and Artistic Transits from the 1960s to the Present

Participant

27-28 November, 2017

IHA, FCSH, NOVA, Lisbon

2023

A-Place, Sensing Place Together

Participant

14-15 September, 2023

IFILNOVA, FCSH, NOVA, Lisbon

XII Graduate Conference in Culture Studies

Paper Presentation: "Many Hands Make Light Work (2022): Curating Relational Infrastructures"

25-27 January, 2024

Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Lisbon

Academic Conferences

2024

VII Lisbon Summer School for the Study of Culture: Global Translations

Poster Presentation

Lisbon Consortium, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Lisbon

2018

VIII Lisbon Summer School for the Study of Culture: Cyber+Cipher+Culture

Paper Presentation: "Architecture of Bigness or Cipher Architeture"

Lisbon Consortium, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Lisbon

2019

IX Lisbon Summer School for the Study of Culture: Neurohumanities. Threats and Promises

Paper Presentation: "Institutional Attention Ecologies: The Case of Visual Arts Organisations"

Lisbon Consortium, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Lisbon

2011-2014

BA Philosophy

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich

thesis: "The Relationship between Authenticity and Personal Relationships"

2017-2019

MA Culture Studies

Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Lisbon

thesis: "Knowledge Production in Visual Arts Organisations: A Case Study on the Triangle Network" (summa cum laude)

2019-2020

CuratorLab

Konstfack, Stockholm

with Joanna Warsza and invited curators Judith Wielander and Matteo Lucchetti (Visible Project)

2022-present

IHA/FCT PhD Student in Artistic Studies: Art and Mediation

Instituto de História da Arte, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa

Education

Visiting Researcher PGEHA/USP

Programa de Pós-Graduação em Estética e História da Arte, USP, São Paulo

2024