Valentine Umansky

Valentine Umansky (1989, France) is a curator and writer. Director of the Department of the Moving Image and European and Photographic Acquisitions at the Tate Modern in London, she also co-organised the retrospective dedicated to Ana Mendieta and several exhibitions featuring artists such as Belkis Ayón, Roy DeCarava and Rosa Barba. Drawing on her experience at the International Center of Photography and MoMA in New York, she also co-curated the Gjon Mili Biennial in Kosovo and the EMAP x Frieze Film Biennial in Korea in 2025, as well as the LagosPhoto festival in Nigeria in 2018. At the same time, she oversaw the English translation of the collection Pierres, by Roger Caillois.

Her residency project, entitled Sitôt écrit. Systèmes de notations en art contemporain, examines modes of interpellation — in other words, the ways in which artists use instructions to invite action. Drawing on performance and sound art, this research project analyses artistic scores and the creation of alphabets specific to each artist. The aim is to study how these systems make it possible to formalise and disseminate intangible works, whether they are intended to be performed by the artist themselves or by other professionals.