Sam Ozer is a curator, producer, and writer based between in Mexico City, New York, and Paris. She is the founder and artistic director of TONO, a non-profit arts organization that explores and supports time-based artwork, including performance, dance, music, and moving image. TONO Festival serves as TONO’s laboratory – an annual event hosted in Mexico City and Puebla, Mexico, with programming across museums, music venues, and public spaces. TONO has collaborated with institutions such as the Peabody Essex Museum, Massachusetts; Rockefeller Center, New York; Museo de Arte Moderno, Museo Anahuacalli, Ex Teresa Arte Actual, Museo Dolores Cárcamo, Centro de Cultura Digital, Centro Cultural España en México, Laboratorio Arte Alameda, all Mexico City; Museo Amparo, Puebla; National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Pinacoteca de São Paulo; and the Serpentine Galleries, London. These projects have involved co-commissioning artwork, touring artwork, and introducing artists to new audiences through exhibitions, screenings, talks, digital programming, and live programming.

As an independent curator, Ozer has organized projects at museums and commercial galleries in Athens, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Milan, and New York. As a member of The Racial Imaginary Institute, she organized a series of exhibitions with David Kordansky Gallery. As a researcher, Ozer worked alongside Ekene Ijeoma to conceptualize the syllabi for his courses Black Mobility and Safety in the US I & II and Poetic Justice for Climate Crisis and curated and produced subsequent speaker series at the Poetic Justice Group at the MIT Media Lab. She formerly held curatorial roles at the Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1 in New York. She was the inaugural video curator for Feria Material (2022), the inaugural video curator for Zonamaco (2023) and the inaugural cinema curator for Art Baja California (2023).

As a creative consultant, she has worked with Vogue's photo department, advised artists and commercial galleries on their communications strategy, and organized in-house workshops and programs with brands such as Adidas, Soho House Mexico City, and Topo Chico. Approaching brands with a curatorial eye, she has also secured strategic partnerships between visionary brands, artists, and institutions. She is regularly invited for talks and has presented her work at Lafayette Anticipations, Paris; LOOP, Barcelona; and for the New Centre for Research & Practice at the 59th Venice Biennale. As a writer, she regularly contributes to Artforum, The Art Newspaper, Art21, CFA, Cultured, Cura, Document Journal, Frieze, Interview Magazine, Materia, PIN-UP Magazine, and Purple Magazine, where she was the Managing Editor for Purple 41 and 42 and Editor-at-large for the Mexico City issue. She was a 2022 and 2023 Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant finalist.

Contact

For inquiries related to curatorial projects, creative partnerships, communications, and writing, email: ozer.samantha(@)gmail.com

For inquiries related to TONO, email: info(@)tonofestival.com