About

Founded in 2014 on the Lower East Side of Manhattan by Catinca Tabacaru, and developed in partnership with Raphael Guilbert. In its early years, the Gallery built a reputation for discovering unique talent and taking risks. It loves site-transormative installations. From show to show, one would often wonder if they’re in the same space.

In 2015, the Gallery began a residency program in collaboration with DAI (Dzimbanehe Arts and Culture Interactions) headed by Chikonzero Chazunguza and Jonathan Dube (Chiko and Samaita). 20-minutes outside of Harare, Zimbabwe, surrounded by bushland and small villages we brought international and Zimbabwean artists into conversation with each other, and local communities. The month-long project was a sweet and profound experience, producing an exhibition mounted at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe in 2016. Catinca Tabacaru curated in close colaboration with Raphael Chikukwa, at the time Curator of the National Gallery in Harare. He has since taken the role of Director of the institution.

In 2017, what we had now come to call the CTG Collective, together with DAI built CTG Harare. The building, fathomed by Catinca Tabacaru and designed by Rachel Monosov, initially served as the Gallery’s second location-changing purpose in time to become the hub of DAI’s community and creative programs. The CTG Collective returs often to Harare and has built noteworthy projects exhibited both locally and internationally. The years spent in Zimbabwe have allowed the Gallery the time and knowledge to add a robust voice from the Continet to its roster.

In 2020, the Gallery moved its primary exhibition space from NYC to Bucharest, Romania, where it is building its Eastern European; parallels between post-communism and post-collonialism become more pronounced. Current projects include a trans-Continental art-centric look at Nicolae Ceausescu’s involvement in Zimbabwe’s and Mozambique’s liberation movements in the 1960s-1970s. The project is headed by curator Raphael Guilbert, who joined the gallery in January 2015.

This itinerant experience is reflected in the Gallery’s work collaboratively with its artists as the CTG Collective, which oganizes art residencies internationally with editions thus far in Canada, Finalnd, Germany, Nigeria, Romania, Serbia, Ukraine, and Zimbabwe.

The Gallery explores multi-disciplinary practices with a focus on performance. Major Projects include: TRANS-Ville (2017-2018), a performance art series transpired in its New York City window during, co-curated with Coco Dolle; Transcultural Protocol (2017) by Rachel Monosov and Admire Kamudzengerere included in the Zimbabwe Pavilion of the 57th Venice Biennale and Video+Radio+Live (2021), a performance-based project by 6 Romanian galleries, collateral event to the Art Encounters Biennial in Timisoara, Romania.