dialogue
Jenn Ellis | Curator & Founder
September 2025
6 min read
Jenn Ellis, curator and founder of Apsara Studio, approaches art through the prisms of time, care, and cross-cultural dialogue. With training in law and art history, and a career spanning Hong Kong to London, she grounds her practice in asking: why this, why here, why now?
Ellis founded Apsara Studio in 2021 as a collaborative curatorial platform, choosing a name that honours both the apsara, a Buddhist figure of dance and performance, and the idea that curators, like artists, deserve studios. Now based in Battersea, Apsara functions as both a workspace and an incubator for artist- and curator-led projects, emphasising openness, hosting, and exchange.
In 2024, Ellis curated across three continents, presenting 12 projects including Dawn Ng in New York, Noémie Goudal in Seoul, and Naminapu Maymuru-White at Frieze London, whose monumental bark painting was later acquired by Tate. These projects reflect her commitment to careful connection-making, situating practices thoughtfully within context.
Her curatorial vocabulary often returns to time, shaped by her upbringing among physicists, expanded through explorations of ancestry and place, and recently deepened by motherhood. Through Apsara and beyond, Ellis carves out a curatorial space where feeling stands alongside intellect, and dialogue converses with display.
Jenn Ellis. Photo courtesy of Jenn Ellis.
You're Swiss-Colombian, studied law at King's College and art history at Cambridge, and spent five years in Hong Kong before settling in London.
How have these geographic and disciplinary shifts shaped the way you think about art, space, and context in your curatorial work?
“Growing up I would always pause when asked where I was from - even in the above, I am technically half English and was born in California but grew up outside Geneva so identify more as Swiss. That ‘confusion’ is something, after many years, that I have lent into. Thinking and unravelling it was a series of dialogues between places, customs, perspectives, approaches. When I moved to Hong Kong and worked a lot across the Asia-Pacific region this augmented that pluralism, all of which has ultimately fed back into my curatorial work. I am passionate and invested in cross-cultural dialogue, understanding we’re all different yet finding moments of exchange and connection. And these can be between artists, but also with spaces and contexts. Whenever embarking on a project or an idea I think of the dialogue but also: why this, why here, why now? I need these to be in place in order to embark.
The shift from Law to History of Art was a stark one. Not only because of the studying approach for each but also the way of thinking: the former created a box and an outline, the latter urged expansive thought. The mix of the two, however, has been incredible in my pursuit as an independent curator and the founder of Apsara Studio. Having confidence with technical business language and documentation is key to running a small organisation. But equally it’s something that is essential for anyone who is freelance and especially creative - the frameworks for work can often be too loose and advantage is taken. So the legal training, which I try to pass on to my community, has majorly contributed to trying to set a standard of how creatives should be taken seriously as working individuals.”
Installation view: ‘Stitch ‘i’ Story’ at Apsara Studio, 2025. Hansol Kim and Arrange Whatever Pieces Come Your Way. Photography: Yumin Lee.
You founded Apsara Studio as a curatorial platform. What is Apsara, and what motivated you to create it?
“From 2012-2020 I worked at Kiang Malingue, predominantly writing about our exhibitions, artists and building relationships with curators, critics and museums. In 2017 I moved to London to represent the gallery across the West and in doing so started realising more site-responsive projects that were collaborative in nature with various organisations and entities, especially non-profit ones. We did projects from a palazzo in Bergamo to an old magistrates court in Liverpool and a Grade 1-listed church in London. It was an interesting, innovative and meaningful model, which spurred my personal identity as a curator.
In 2020 when the pandemic hit there was no longer any scope to continue these kinds of projects so I faced a fork in the road: join another gallery or organisation, or go solo. I flung myself at the latter. I slowly started being approached to work on projects and in 2021 decided to launch a curatorial studio and name it Apsara. The thinking behind the name was that I didn’t want it to take mine or be singular to myself, making sure I kept it open to collaborations with others.
Also, Apsara is a Buddhist entity that supports dance and performance, my first artistic loves. Equally I wanted it to be thought of as a studio, the logic being: artists have studios, designers have studios, architects have studios… why don’t curators? So over time we’ve become approximate to a guild, each person bringing a range of expertise from scholarly research to architectural exhibition design. Now, since October 2024, we have our physical studio and project space off Battersea Park, which we work from but also have channelled to investigate the idea of ‘hosting’ and ‘being hosted’, acting as an incubator for artist and curator-led projects.”
Molly Grad, 'Invisible modes', 2024, installation view at The Florence Trust. Photography: James Retief.
In 2024, your curatorial projects with Frieze and Breguet spanned three cities. You presented works by Dawn Ng in New York, Noémie Goudal in Seoul, and Naminapu Maymuru-White at Frieze London.
How has working across such varied cultural and conceptual contexts influenced your sense of responsibility or shaped your curatorial approach?
“I like that you use the term responsibility - I think about this a lot. As written above, I think very carefully about context, and question the when, why and how. I think we need to be sensitive, especially when introducing artists and practices from one part of the world to another. I consistently seek to avoid something I’ve dubbed the UFO effect, seeking rather harmony while still achieving impact - however you wish to assess that.
For Dawn, she’d lived in New York for a while but this was her first solo presentation in the city and we were able to produce new work. For Noémie, the video that was exhibited was financially supported by Breguet and then shown at the Pompidou as part of her nomination for the Marcel Duchamp prize. For Naminapu, I’d previously shown her work in a group show the previous year but this was an opportunity to bring over a major bark painting installation, which was consequently acquired by the Tate for their collection. It’s ultimately been a question of thoughtful connection-making.”
Lucia Pizzani, 'Clay, seeds and other ancestors', 2025, installation view at Frieze No 9 Cork Street. Photography: James Retief.
Your work often touches on ideas of time, ancestry, care, and site, as seen in projects like Terra, the vineyard-based exhibition in Burgundy, or Clay, Seeds and Other Ancestors, the solo show by Lucia Pizzani at Cork Street.
Are there particular themes or questions you find yourself returning to, or feel especially compelled to explore more deeply?
“I’m really inquisitive about all of the above but ‘time’ perhaps captures my mind the most or is the running thread. I grew up in a family of scientists, theoretical particle physicists to be exact, so thinking in realms, or expanding one’s sensitivity to origin and existence’s elasticity, has been deeply vested in my mind.
From that springboard I have my own approach and train of thought to unpacking and crucially approaching it, and I feel that considerations around ancestry and land or place are integral to my and our conversation.
I recently became a mother, which has also immeasurably expanded my dissection and articulation around the theme and idea of time, thinking primarily in terms of emotion or sentiment and language, rather than object. How do you articulate it? Express it? My thoughts are not fully formed here yet but I’m attentive to the train of thought and excited to see how it will trickle into my curatorial practice.“
Left to right: Haroun Hayward, Mariana Hanh and Sebastian Lloyd Rees. Installation view at Chateau de Chevigny-en-Valière, TERRA, 2024, Burgundy, France. Courtesy of artists, Hales Gallery, Apsara Studio and Vardaxoglou. Photography: James Retief.
If you could curate without constraint, no budget, no borders, no limits, what kind of project would you create? Where would it take place, and what kind of experience would you hope it offers?
“As you identified above, I'm passionate about care. I’m also extremely sensitive to architecture, nature, and how art can sing in it’s/their midst.
No limits: I would find a stretch of land where the sight lines were wide and the air was warm but not too hot. If I close my eyes I smell warm olive oil, hear the rustle of leaves and feel a breeze - perhaps there is water in the distance and you’re at an elevation. To access you’re walking or driving for a little while and find a low-lying building, which isn’t ostentatious, but integrates itself in the landscape and speaks with it, respects it. It’s made of cob blocks perhaps and has glass as well as open areas, so the art across all mediums can breathe on and off the walls, and with the expansive space around it. There is rigour but the programming is following feeling accompanied by intellectual thought - not the other way around. And there is a consideration of different generations, from newborns to our grandparents, not only in terms of access but also how they feel and experience “it”.”
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