After graduating from the University of Cape Town, Claire Breukel began her career working for the South African Center for Photography and the Association for Visual Arts, both non-profit organizations. Invited to curate the 2002 Cape Town Month of Photography biennale, she went on to curate the Vision Photography Festival and Brett Kebble Art Awards, 2003 and 2004. Introduced to Miami through the Rubell Family Collection, she took the position of Executive Director at Locust Projects, a renowned alternative non-profit. Breukel has independently curated exhibitions in South Africa, New York, Miami and Vienna and served as Vice Chair of Miami Beach Art in Public Places. As art critic and writer she has been published in Eikon, ArtPulse, Wynwood magazine and Arte Aldia. She is currently nomadic in her role as Coordinator of PUMAVision and Curator of PUMA.Creative.
Her most recent exhibition Coca-colonized, at Brotkunsthalle Vienna, Austria and Marte Museum, San Salvador, El Savador in May 2011, exhibits artists from Africa and South and Central America, and focuses on exploring the concept of a “new and empowered identity” in regions that have been traditionally associated with colonialism. This empowered identity she suggests stems from the ability for artists to speak on both a local and global platform (an ability acquired by being exposed to both worlds), as well as the ability to interact with audiences in an immediate and direct manner through the use of unconventional and public exhibition space.
Breukel is interested in site specific and installation artworks that challenge conventional modes of interaction with artworks and traditional modes of navigating exhibition spaces.
