Khan to asssume the role through 2022, expanding the nonprofit org’s mission to platform woman-identified critics and artists.
Topical Cream, the non-profit arts platform that champions the work of women and gender non-conforming individuals, is pleased to announce its appointment of Nora Khan (she/her) as its first Editor-in-Residence. Beginning this week, Khan will assume leadership of the editorial direction of Topical Cream for one-year, including commissioning features, interviews, and reviews for the online magazine.
“We look forward to supporting and thriving under Nora Khan’s leadership. Her groundbreaking work in the fields of art criticism and technology will push Topical Cream further into the future, creating more opportunity for thought leadership and bold new ideas from our community of extraordinary women and gender non-conforming individuals,” said Topical Cream Founder and Director Lyndsy Welgos (she/her).
The Topical Cream Editor-in-Residence program was developed in response to the urgent need for institutional support for criticism and experimental journalism. Nominations for the residency were solicited from Topical Cream’s Board of Directors and advisors.
“I’ve long admired Topical Cream’s mission of supporting a diverse criticism and editorial roster. I’m thrilled to use this platform to continue advocating for and commissioning women and non-binary thinkers. Their voices, their rich analysis, help create a common critical language needed to understand the stakes of contemporary technology and digital culture. No other voices are more needed to not only frame the stakes of A.I., mass surveillance, and algorithmic mediation, but also imagine alternative futures for digital culture. My vision is to continue to push the boundaries of what digital art criticism and technological criticism can be, by supporting new forms of thinking,” said Nora Khan, critic and 2021 Topical Cream Editor.
Recent Topical Cream featured artists and contributors include Mickalene Thomas, Aria Dean, Camille Henrot, Lena Henke, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Legacy Russell, Avena Gallagher, and Juliana Huxtable. In 2020, the organization launched its first annual prize for artists and activists whose efforts have made a meaningful impact on our community. The inaugural Topical Cream Prizes were awarded to artist Martine Gutierrez and activist Viva Ruiz. Winners in both categories were chosen by a special advisory board from the Topical Cream community including Ebony L. Haynes, Dena Yago, Jon Huddleson, Lyndsy Welgos, Marcella Zimmermann, Julia Kim, Yulu Serao, Christopher Udemezue, Ryan Jefferies, and Lena Henke. The non-profit also continued its video series Rx Studio, an archive of conversations and performances with contemporary artists in their own spaces and produced two unrestricted grant campaigns to support women, femme, and LGBTQ+ artists affected by COVID-19.
About Nora Khan
Nora N. Khan is a writer of criticism on digital visual culture and philosophy of emerging technology. Her research specifically focuses on experimental art and music practices that make arguments through software, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. She is a professor at Rhode Island School of Design, in Digital + Media; she teaches graduate students critical theory and artistic research, critical writing both for artists and designers, and history of digital media.
In 2020, she was an editor of Forces of Art: Perspectives from a Changing World (Valiz) along with Carin Kuoni (Editor-in-Chief), Serubiri Moses, and Jordi Baltà Portolés, and editor of Casey Reas’ Making Pictures with Generative Adversarial Networks (Anteism Press), supported by Google’s Artists and Machine Intelligence Group. As The Shed’s first guest curator, Khan organized the exhibition Manual Override, focused on contemporary artists engaging and critiquing emerging technology. The exhibition features newly commissioned installations by Lynn Hershman Leeson, Sondra Perry, and Morehshin Allahyari, and works by Martine Syms and Simon Fujiwara. Manual Override saw 30,000 visitors in two months, and was covered extensively in Vogue, the New York Times, and 4Columns.
About Topical Cream
Topical Cream is a New York-based arts organization that champions the work of women and gender non-conforming individuals in contemporary art through public programming and digital publishing. Originally launched in 2013 as an online magazine countering the male-dominated art media’s portrayal of women in contemporary art, Topical Cream publishes original interviews and articles dedicated to bringing public attention to female-identified individuals working in contemporary art. Topical Cream has spearheaded high-impact public events with artists and curators from our network, including Swiss Institute, Artists Space, MoMA, Eyebeam, Sotheby’s, and ICP.
Topical Cream contact: rx [at] topicalcream.org
Press: Marcella Zimmermann, Vice President, Cultural Counsel, marcella [at] culturalcounsel.com
