Practitioners in Conversation Ep. 4: Curating through constellations of fakers, makers, and good intentions

Welcome back David Krut Listeners, and happy 2025. This year we will be continueing our latest series of podcasts, Practioners in Conversation. In this weeks episode, we welcome art writer and curator Nathalie Viruly to the Blue House as she discusses her work and her master’s studies with David Krut.

Nathalie Viruly is a curator and art writer based in Cape Town. With a thorough knowledge of South African and international art contexts, Viruly works closely with artists to expand formats of exhibition production. Viruly holds an MA in Curating Art, Law and Management from Stockholm University and an Honours in Curating and Political Science from the University of Cape Town. She has held institutional roles such as Research Associate at Moderna Museet (Stockholm) and spearheaded collective projects like The Centre for the Fictitious Ante Facto (Stockholm), Bad Federation (Ireland/Stockholm), Gallery-De-Move-On (Cape Town) and Via Wax Studio (Cape Town). Additionally, she has curated presentations for the Investec Cape Town Art Fair, Accelerator Konsthall (Stockholm), Coulisse Gallery (Stockholm), Nobel Lights (Stockholm), and Silver Museet (Arjeplog). 

Alongside her work toward greater visibility and deep sociality, she has also curated several group exhibitions and mentored local emerging artists. Oscillating between institutions and independent artistic structures, her practice centres on playing with scale, collaboration, public programming, and renegotiating space to write multiple art histories. She maintains her writing practice by generating text for galleries, magazines, books, and online platforms. Recently she co-edited and wrote for the anthology Anatomy of a Cowboy, and published her thesis And And And: The Bookstore as a Situation and Practice From Ulises Carrión to Contemporary Bookshoppery and Happenstance.

(NB: In the Podcast David Krut refers to Nathalie’s booth at the Cape Town Art Fair last year. He states that the sold out work was created by her co-founder, Michael Tymbios. In truth, these works were created by Selwyn Steyn. Apologies for the confusion)