NEST: Network for Empowerment, Solidarity, and Transregionality

NEST: Network for Empowerment, Solidarity, and Transregionality is an alliance of like-minded non-profit organizations (NGOs) and independent structures, initiated by AWARE: Archives of Women Artists, Research & Exhibitions. Coming from various parts of the world, these organizations collaborate transnationally with the shared aim of highlighting women and non-binary artists and their work in the contemporary art worlds and the histories of art.

This transcultural network is based on mutual support and learning, the exchange of feminist practices and methodologies, and aims to explore pressing questions surrounding structural issues such as funding and sustainability as well as resistance in hostile political contexts. Through its actions, the NEST network will draw attention to archives and collective research from outside the institutional context to forge alternative methodologies and challenge dominant narratives.

AWARE: Archives of Women Artists, Research & Exhibitions will host the participating structures for a two-day convening in Paris in November 2024, including a closed-door meeting held at the Villa Vassilieff and a public convening held at the Palais du Tokyo. This event will bring these non-institutional voices from diverse cultural contexts into dialogue with Parisian audiences and share practices that highlight the importance of collective work as a feminist strategy.

NEST promotes an intergenerational perspective and consists of entities that show a diversity of organizational structures, from membership-based organizations to research-based collectives.

The partnering organisations are:

AFSAR: Asian Feminist Studio for Art and Research

Archives des luttes des femmes en Algérie

Archives Lesbiennes

A.I.R Gallery

Asia Art Archive

AWARE: Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions

Centre Audiovisuel Simone de Beauvoir