Goldin+Senneby, Starfish and Citrus Thorn (immunity of the church / pretext of the immunity of a church), 2021. Tissue dye of carmine, indigo, and picric acid on a copy of the 1665 edition of Codex Theodosianus. Courtesy the artists; Nome, Berlin; and CFHill, Stockholm. Photo: Billie Clarken/Nome

Flare-Up, a solo exhibition by Swedish conceptual art duo Goldin+Senneby (founded in 2004 by Simon Goldin and Jacob Senneby) was originally curated by Richard Julin at Accelerator in Stockholm, and is organized by Natalie Bell for the MIT List Visual Arts Center. The exhibition presents a recent body of work by Goldin+Senneby that focuses on issues of autoimmunity, accessibility, and ecology. 

Goldin+Senneby: Flare-Up, Accelerator, Stockholm University, Stockholm, March 8–June 15, 2025. Courtesy Accelerator. Photo: Jean-Baptiste Béranger

Living with an autoimmune condition has shaped Goldin+Senneby’s artistic and personal lives. In Flare-Up, they interweave the climate crisis and eco-activism, histories of political and biological immunity, the cultural production of “landscape” through painting, and issues of access and accessibility. Flare-Up is also the working title of an as-yet-unfinished novel written in collaboration with Katie Kitamura; two chapters are available as a takeaway publication within the exhibition. With Accelerator, the List has co-produced a number of Goldin+Senneby’s Swallowimage works, which reinterpret seventeenth- to nineteenth-century oil paintings—depicting scenes of death, disease, or healing—to consider how contemporary treatments exist relative to images and faith. Some of the works in Flare-Up emerged from Goldin+Senneby’s 2018 research visit to MIT’s Art, Culture, and Technology (ACT) program, where they established contacts with historians of science and synthetic biologists. 

Goldin+Senneby, Swallowimage (verso man in cave with skull, 19th century) and Swallowimage (verso man in ecstasy with skull, 17th century), both 2025. Isaria sinclairii fungus and oil on canvas. Courtesy Accelerator. Photo: Jean-Baptiste Béranger

At MIT, many researchers work in the areas of autoimmunity, neuroscience, and biomedical engineering. In addition to connecting the artists with these scientists, the List will also reach out to disability rights communities and centers–such as the Disability Rights Fund, Disability Law Center, Autoimmune Association, The Boston Home, and others–serving people living with multiple sclerosis and other autoimmune or neuromuscular conditions.

Natalie Bell is Chief Curator at the MIT List Visual Arts Center, where she has organized recent solo exhibitions of Steina, Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme, Raymond Boisjoly, Matthew Angelo Harrison, Leslie Thornton, Sung Tieu, and Sreshta Rit Premnath, among others. She also co-curated the group exhibition Symboints: Contemporary Artists and the Biosphere (2022). From 2013 to 2019, Bell was Associate Curator at the New Museum in New York, where she curated and co-curated over a dozen solo exhibitions and several major group exhibitions, including Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon (2017), The Keeper (2016), and Here and Elsewhere (2014). Prior to her work at the New Museum, she served as Assistant Curator for The Encyclopedic Palace, the International Exhibition of the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013. 

Zach Ngin is an art worker based in Providence. They currently serve as Curatorial Assistant at the MIT List Visual Arts Center, where they organized the first US solo museum exhibitions of Kite (with former Assistant Curator Selby Nimrod) and Elif Saydam, both in 2025. Ngin previously held positions at the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), the Brooklyn Museum (New York), the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts (San Francisco), the MIT Press (Cambridge), and Brown University (Providence). They also serve as an art editor at n+1, and have criticism published or forthcoming in C Magazine, Boston Art Review, e-flux, Momus, and The Amp, among other publications.

Richard Julin is Artistic Director of Accelerator at Stockholm University, an exhibition space where art, science, and societal issues meet. He has more than twenty-five years of experience curating art exhibitions, events, and, foremost, performances. Recent projects at Accelerator include CHEAP’s Choose Mutation (2024), Nikima Jagudajev’s Basically (2024), Mona Hatoum’s So Much I Want To Say (2022), and Cyprien Gaillard’s Overburden (2019). Previously Julin served as Chief Curator and Deputy Director of Magasin III Museum for Contemporary Art in Stockholm, where he curated exhibitions featuring Katharina Grosse, Pipilotti Rist, Tino Sehgal, Andrea Zittel, Tal R, Ayşe Erkmen, and others. He has edited a number of books in collaboration with contemporary artists, often focusing on conversations exploring their visions, creative processes, and perspectives on life. 

Ola Wlusek, Dakota Hoska, John P. Lukavic, The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art