MILAGROS BELLO: CURATING AS AFFECTIVE RESISTANCE
Interview by Rafael Montilla, artist and editor
“Curating is not just a practice — it’s an act of intellectual and emotional resistance. It demands listening, engaging in dialogue, and creating space for what remains unspoken.”
— Dr. Milagros Bello
In this intimate dialogue, Dr. Milagros Bello offers a thoughtful reflection on her curatorial practice, which is profoundly anchored in affect, fragmentation, and co-authorship. Through her work, Bello deconstructs traditional hierarchies, challenges museography norms, and envisions curatorial spaces as sites of encounter, where art is experienced as a living, dynamic body. From MIA Curatorial Projects in Miami, she has cultivated a critical, affective, and transdisciplinary approach that reshapes the viewer’s engagement and redefines the role of contemporary art within society.
Dr. Milagros Bello is a prominent independent curator, art critic, researcher, and sociologist of art. Based in Miami, she is the founder and director of MIA Curatorial Projects (formerly Curator’s Voice Art Projects, established in Wynwood in 2010), an independent curatorial platform for critical thought, experimentation, and visual resistance. She earned a Ph.D. in Sociology, specializing in the Sociology of Art, and a master’s degree in art history from the Sorbonne (Université de Paris I and Paris VII, France), along with a degree in Clinical Psychology from the Central University of Venezuela.
Dr. Bello has curated extensively in the U.S. and internationally, with notable projects including Americans: Current Imaginaries (2022) and Americas. Land of Dreams (2024), both presented at the European Cultural Center during the 59th and 60th Venice Biennales. She is a member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) and the National Federation of Psychologists of Venezuela.
A former university professor for over a decade, she taught critical theory, contemporary art history, and visual culture at institutions such as Florida International University (FIU), Florida Atlantic University (FAU), The Art Institute/Miami, and Istituto Marangoni/Miami. Beyond curating, she is a published writer, art lecturer, and mentor to emerging artists, committed to fostering critical discourse and artistic development.
Rafael Montilla: Milagros, what defines the approach that guides your curatorial work at MIA Curatorial Projects?
Milagros Bello: I work from a critical, multilayered perspective that brings together different modes of thinking. The works I exhibit are not illustrations of a thesis, nor visual footnotes to a concept. They are affective material, embodied archives, fugitive gestures. I am interested in letting artworks speak for themselves—as living presences—rather than reducing them to conceptual representation.
RM: Your exhibitions tend to resist traditional narrative structures. How do you shape the viewer’s experience?
MB: I avoid linear narratives and authoritarian chronology. Instead, I construct unstable cartographies where affective ecologies and everyday micro-repair practices intersect. The viewer’s engagement emerges not from passive contemplation, but from active implication—through listening, slowing down, and connecting with the inner body.
RM: How do you position yourself in relation to traditional museography devices?
MB: I deconstruct them. I question the vitrine as an illusionist and hierarchical façade, and I challenge the authority of the wall text as an imposed discourse. My curatorial spaces are permeable and open to tension—where media, materials, and scales clash and converse. Fragility, encounter, and discovery become central. I aim to create visual fields of circulation rather than interpretive closure.
RM: What does your collaborative process with artists look like?
MB: Dialogue is at the heart of my practice. I reject the notion of the curator as a singular authorial voice. I dissolve hierarchies to co-create curatorial narratives with the artists. My approach is situated, affective, and connective. I see every form of exhibition as a gesture of care—a way to nurture relationships between the work and its maker.
RM: As a scholar and independent thinker, how do you approach contemporary art?
MB: Through a transversal and holistic lens. I’m passionate about generating counter-dialogues—experimenting with works, performance, music, challenging established frameworks and opening lateral interstices in where new, sensorial connections with art can arise. I aim to introduce moments of tension or disruption within the viewer’s usual perception — a friction that interrupts passive observation and encourages a direct, active engagement with the unexpected. My curatorial practice is not about presenting art as mere spectacle or aesthetic comfort; it’s about activating a space of questioning. Unexpected works visual contrasts can enhance perception.
RM: What role does MIA Curatorial Projects play in your broader curatorial vision?
MB: More than a formal exhibition venue, MIA is a transitional space site of listening, learning, and visual discovery. The installations break scale, provoke dissonance, and create unexpected points of contact. I invite the viewer to pause, to wait for the work, to step away from the productivity speed of image consumption and enter its immanent, invisible core. It’s a matter of immersive perception to the work.
RM: How would you describe your interpretive approach to art?
MB: I don’t curate from a traditional interpretive stance. My exhibitions function as poetic dialogic micro-narratives or fragments of dialogue between artists and curator. They are open fields of resonance, not containers of fixed meaning.
RM: Lastly, do you view curating as a political or ethical act?
MB: Absolutely. Curating can be a subtle form of resistance. It is a way to map out alternative worlds from the margins, from the body, and from shared creation. Resistance also means care—listening, holding space, and making room for what has yet to be said.
Milagros Bello, Ph.D.
Director and Chief Curator
MIA Curatorial Projects
📍 6945 NE 3rd Avenue, Miami, FL 33138
🌐 www.miacuratorial.com
📞 +1 786 357 0568
Follow her on Instagram: @milagrosbellocurator / @miacuratorial
Contact: [email protected]
