What do basket weaving, ceramic production, vernacular architecture, cooking, puppetry, community organizing, and storytelling have in common? For Diana Campbell, they are all technologies: intergenerational practices rooted in ways of knowing that emerge from local  ecologies, social practices, and naturally available resources. Whether working in Bangladesh, Uzbekistan, the Philippines, or the desert outside of Los Angeles, Campbell’s approach to curating and building cultural infrastructure prioritizes collaboration as an antidote to extractive systems of knowledge production that separate  “thinkers” and “makers.” Seeing art as a form of infrastructure that can create economic opportunities, forge new relationships within and between communities, reveal marginalized histories, and circulate ideas from the local into the global, Curating to Break Credentialism is a class that will reveal how innovation comes not from producing entirely anew, but rather in recognizing and activating the tactics and strategies of making that are unique to a place.

Diana Campbell serves as the Artistic Director for the Samdani Art Foundation based in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where she also holds the position of Chief Curator for the Dhaka Art Summit. After spearheading its highly praised iterations between 2014 and 2023, she is currently developing the summit's seventh edition. Additionally, she leads Global Initiatives at the Hartwig Art Foundation and acted as the Artistic Director for the first Bukhara Biennial in 2025. Campbell is a prolific author whose work investigates themes of indigeneity, artistic practice, and the built environment.