What should an ambitious young art enthusiast do when they lose their job? According to Brooklyn-based curator Hannah Traore, the answer is to open your own gallery.
Traore was working as an installation coordinator at the newly-opened New York branch of Fotografiska when the pandemic forced the museum to temporarily close in early 2020. She lost her job as a result.
Instead of moving on to another organisation, the 26-year-old from Toronto decided to realise one of her long-term goals. “I thought let me do what I've always wanted to do and start my own thing,” she says. “I have always had so many ideas and such a strong vision of what I wanted to do. You can't really do those things in someone else's space.”
Hannah Traore Gallery is set to open in New York on the Lower East Side on 20 January and it will centre around marginalised communities. “I am focusing on artists who have traditionally been left out of art spaces,” Traore says. “Artists of colour, indigenous artists, immigrant artists.”
The gallery will have two exhibition spaces—one with works of art that will change every five to six weeks and another for installations that will remain on show for up to three months. The first show in the installation room will be Mi Casa Su Casa curated by the renowned contemporary Moroccan photographer Hasan Hajjaj, which will include works by artists who inspire him. “I want [the space] to feel as if you're walking into the artist's mind or into a different world,” Traore says.
The other exhibition is titled Hues, a group show centred around colour. “The first thing [visitors are] going to notice is the vibrancy and excitement,” Traore says. “Using colour as the focus of the show allows the work to really breathe and exist in its formal qualities.”
The concept for the gallery was born out of Traore’s relationship with her parents. Her mother is an art collector and textile artist and her father is a Malian immigrant who introduced her to her West African heritage. ”Even though I've only been to Mali about four times, I feel very connected to the culture,” she says. “My mother is the reason that I'm doing what I'm doing and my father is the reason that I'm doing it in the way I am.”
