Jazz Swali is a Curator whose work centres on oppositional thinking and doing through queer art and exhibition-making. They engage queering as a critical mode of investigation, exploring issues such as social justice inequalities in representation and marginalisation in the arts.
Jazz is the Curator and Programme Coordinator at Backlit Gallery (Nottingham), serving as Assistant Curator from 2020–23. Independently they have worked with organisations such as New Art Exchange, UK New Artists, CraftSpace, Nottingham Trent University and University of Nottingham. Jazz has participated in various selection panels and has delivered artist development crits and portfolio reviews.
Recent exhibitions curated by Jazz include Punk: Rage and Revolution (2023), The Joy of Destruction (2023), Artists in the Now (2023), in reality, these things need to be said (2021). Working with artists and archives such as Jamie Reid, Rebecca Allen, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Robert Yang, Sleaford Mods, Kim Thompson, Rene Matić, and Exodus Crooks.
Jazz was awarded a Develop Your Creative Practice grant from Arts Council England in 2024 and two project grants for independent curatorial programmes in 2020 and 2022. They were selected for the Emerging Curators Group programme with the British Art Network (Tate and Paul Mellon Centre consortium) in 2023-24. From 2021–24, Jazz served on the Eastside Projects Advisory Board (Birmingham). They were co-awarded the Collaborative Grant from the British Art Network in 2023 and the Seminar Support Grant in 2024, curating a series of seminars to research ‘The Future of Curatorship’.
Jazz graduated from Nottingham Trent University with a BA (Hons) in Photography (2019) and from Leicester University with an MA in Museum and Gallery Studies, focusing on Socially Engaged Practice (2024). Their master's thesis 'From Rural Peripheries to Urban Centres: Is There a Geographic Impact on Museums and Queer Communities?' takes an autoethnographic approach to exploring the geographic influences on museums and queer people in the UK
![]()
Jazz is the Curator and Programme Coordinator at Backlit Gallery (Nottingham), serving as Assistant Curator from 2020–23. Independently they have worked with organisations such as New Art Exchange, UK New Artists, CraftSpace, Nottingham Trent University and University of Nottingham. Jazz has participated in various selection panels and has delivered artist development crits and portfolio reviews.
Recent exhibitions curated by Jazz include Punk: Rage and Revolution (2023), The Joy of Destruction (2023), Artists in the Now (2023), in reality, these things need to be said (2021). Working with artists and archives such as Jamie Reid, Rebecca Allen, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Robert Yang, Sleaford Mods, Kim Thompson, Rene Matić, and Exodus Crooks.
Jazz was awarded a Develop Your Creative Practice grant from Arts Council England in 2024 and two project grants for independent curatorial programmes in 2020 and 2022. They were selected for the Emerging Curators Group programme with the British Art Network (Tate and Paul Mellon Centre consortium) in 2023-24. From 2021–24, Jazz served on the Eastside Projects Advisory Board (Birmingham). They were co-awarded the Collaborative Grant from the British Art Network in 2023 and the Seminar Support Grant in 2024, curating a series of seminars to research ‘The Future of Curatorship’.
Jazz graduated from Nottingham Trent University with a BA (Hons) in Photography (2019) and from Leicester University with an MA in Museum and Gallery Studies, focusing on Socially Engaged Practice (2024). Their master's thesis 'From Rural Peripheries to Urban Centres: Is There a Geographic Impact on Museums and Queer Communities?' takes an autoethnographic approach to exploring the geographic influences on museums and queer people in the UK
