PAPRIKA Collective is a futuristic exploratory virtual and archival platform that sustains and habituates emerging artistic experimentation and development.
PAPRIKA Collective metaphorically inherits the meaning of ‘PAPRIKA’, which is a touch of spiciness, a sensation induced by the ground spice made from the dried red fruit.
By cultivating a nomadic habitant, PAPRIKA Collective promotes a new model of exhibition-making, encouraging experimentation and live performance installation. The core focus of PAPRIKA Collective lies with performance-, process-, and installation-led practice beyond the traditional boundaries of the physical space.
PAPRIKA Collective operates a sustainable and hybrid business model encompassing both advantages of a virtual gallery and versatile physical non-profit projects worldwide. The collective was founded by Ada Xiaoyu Hao in Washington, D.C. in 2016, and in London in September 2015.
Establishing an ethical reputation as a curatorial platform and nurturer of emerging new talents, PAPRIKA Collective invites and fosters the development and presentation of new work in a wild range of spaces in London, UK, Williamsburg, US, and Beijing, China; at art fairs internationally, and through site-specific projects in collaboration with partner organisations and institutions.
PAPRIKA Collective nurtures a rigorous commitment to artist development and represents a growing number of international artists: Whiskey Chow, Meng Zhou, Rosie Gibbens, Matt Page, Ro Hardaker, Demelza Toy Toy, Emilia Demetriou, Isobel Smith, Ashly-Louise Mcnaughton, Boram Moon, Jade Blackstock, Samuel Ross, Elghandiva Tholkham, Caterina Gobbi, Helen Davison, alongside further exhibited and associated international artists.
Our initial and continuous purpose at PAPRIKA Collective is to create and foster an ethical environment for artists, especially young emerging artists to make work in a sustainable community, where artist are encouraged to take more risks, and make experimentation with no grounding limitations. As a new contemporary artists’ collective, we would like to reduce our economical footprint as a virtual platform at this stage. Our model of discovering and uncovering ungentrificated urban spaces, and conserving the cartographical archive of the individual artistic practice passage allows this. Not only we can take more risks in these non-spaces, the artists are less confined by the limitation of space, and the curatorial choices are less conservative.