PICTURE THIS
A groundbreaking Manchester exhibition is hoping to give people a new perspective on both art and recovery, says Rhea Mehmet
Recoverist Curators: Reimagining the World We Live In is an exhibition at the Whitworth Gallery in Manchester, where six people in recovery from substance use took the lead. Given free rein to select works from the gallery’ s collection, their choices proved unexpectedly radical – not for including provocative artists like Francis Bacon and Tracey Emin, but for being filtered through the lens of lived experience. The show caps a year of workshopping and research.
And for Dominic Pillai, curator of social engagement at Portraits of Recovery( PORe), it’ s deeply personal. I sat down with him to discuss the exhibition.
You came into this role with a background in filmmaking and community arts. What specifically drew you to Portraits of Recovery?
I started as a workshop facilitator on projects like the BFI Film Academy, and through working with charities as a project manager. I moved into community arts, creatively facilitating various marginalised groups – particularly people with disabilities, neurodivergence and mental health issues. Curation has always been a prominent aspect of my own creative practice, so moving into this area professionally felt like a natural progression. But there’ s something else. As a neurodivergent person with South Asian heritage, a longterm mental health condition and lived experience of recovery, I am acutely aware that many areas of the community are often excluded from the recovery narrative. Portraits of Recovery aims to readdress that through its intersectional work, and it was this approach that drew me.
You’ ve spoken about the decision to be open about your own recovery journey – was that a difficult choice?
In 12-step programmes, anonymity is fundamentally important because of the stigma of addiction. Although Portraits of Recovery’ s ethos is around visibility we also want to respect people’ s choices, which can at times be a tightrope act. When I started in this role, I had to come to terms with the fact that my being in recovery would be out in the open. There was no external pressure to‘ out’ myself, but I felt it was important that the people we work with know I’ m part of their community. A critical part of facilitating a group is building trust, and being open about my lived experience supports this.
The Recoverist Curators project placed six people in recovery with no prior curatorial experience centre stage, in selecting and re-interpreting artworks. What did the process feel and look like in practice?
The project was led by Portraits of Recovery in partnership with the Whitworth, tasking six curators – Anastasia, Annie, Chanje, Paul, Penny and myself – with reinterpreting the gallery’ s collection through the lens of recovery. Meeting bi-weekly for a year, they began by reflecting on themes like‘ self-care’,‘ pride’, and‘ journeying’, using these to guide archive dives and discussions until a resonant set of works emerged.
The gallery sector is starting to acknowledge the lack of representation within their institutions. Through a socially engaged, collaborative approach to curation it provides an oppor tunity to address this issue but also provide space for these miss ing voices to be heard. I’ m interested in the idea of disrupting traditional art spaces because they can often feel inaccessible and non-
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