Sneakers Unboxed: Walk and talk!

Join Ligaya Salazar, curator of Sneakers Unboxed: Studio to Street, for all the stories behind the sneaker from 11am 25 November at Gallery 1 at HOTA.

Meet Ligaya and explore the journey of sneakers as she hosts a walk through this special touring exhibition from the Design Museum in London and learn about how the exhibition was conceptualised, developed and brought to life. Hear direct from the Curator on sneaker choices and sneaker stories! 

We’re well and truly living in the age of the sneaker! Sneakers have transcended their primary function to become fashion items - and works of art. Ligaya will tell the stories behind the 400+ objects (including over 200 shoes, phots, posters, videos and artworks) on show, and I'm sure she'll have lots to say about the size 22 shoe from an NBA great. 

You're in experienced and insightful hands! Ligaya Salazar is a curator focused on contemporary interdisciplinary practice at the intersection of design, craft and art. Her approach is shaped by an interest in how people can be positioned at the heart of curatorial practice, enabling a human-centred take on storytelling.  

Ligaya's recent projects have focused on themes of place – through an ecological, diasporic and communal lense, shining a light on lesser known, purposefully ignored and marginalised narratives. Finding new methods to surface these stories both within institutional contexts as well as through more experimental and layered research-led projects is central to the way in which her practice aims to unpick their socio-ecological complexity.  

In 2021, she was appointed Stanley Picker Fellow. Throughout her fellowship, she developed the ongoing research and exhibition project 'A World of Islands', which brings together artistic perspectives and research on the Philippine archipelago, its climate, its people and their movement over seas and oceans.  

Other current projects include Gaining Ground, an exhibition that foregrounds global craft practices that value soil, biodiversity, local materials and production systems, at the British Textile Biennial in late 2023 and the development of the third Harewood Biennial in 2024, which explores the potential of art and craft as connector, across generations and continents.  

She has devised creative cultural programmes across the cultural and museum sectors for nearly 20 years. As Director of two gallery spaces at the University of the Arts’ London College of Fashion she developed the strategic direction and programming from 2013-2020. As Curator of Contemporary Programmes at the V&A from 2005–13, she commissioned and curated exhibitions, events and projects within a groundbreaking and critically acclaimed cross-disciplinary programme.  

Working as an independent curator and advisor, she was Curator and Artistic Director of the East London Comics and Arts Festival from 2013–19, which she developed from a one-day festival into a month-long programme that has included international partnerships with Festa, São Paulo in 2019 and Illustration Arts Festival, Singapore in 2018. She curated an exhibition on the social and design history of sneakers for the Design Museum London in 2021, which has been touring internationally throughout Europe, Asia and Australia since and her exhibition on the subjectivity of seeing at the Wellcome Collection, In Plain Sight opened in 2022. 

Come along and pick Ligaya's brain.

Images courtesy of HOTA.

By Michaela Lyons