Dr Marianna Tsionki is Associate Professor and University Curator at Leeds Arts University, where she leads the Curation and Library department and the curatorial programme at Blenheim Walk Gallery, focusing on environmental discourse, material ecologies, and post-industrial histories. She also oversees the strategic and operational direction of the University Library, collections and archives, and the development of research-led curatorial programmes. Her curatorial work frequently engages collection-based research and the reinterpretation of archives and inherited holdings through critical and decolonial frameworks.

She is a curator and art theorist whose practice examines contemporary art, ecology, and the curatorial as a site of critical inquiry. Her work is grounded in curatorial pedagogies and research-based practice, examining how exhibition-making can foster collaborative learning and critical engagement with questions of environmental justice and planetary futures.

Engaging transcultural curatorial practice across geographies, epistemologies, and diasporic contexts, she is particularly interested in how exhibitions and institutions mediate between different cultural contexts, diasporic imaginaries, and more-than-human worlds, including indigenous and local ecological knowledge systems. Her curatorial projects and writing address global ecologies of extraction, resource exploitation, toxic legacies, and the scientific and social conditions of the Anthropocene.

Tsionki has delivered talks and participated in panels at Tate Modern and Tate Exchange, The Whitworth, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Castlefield Gallery, and Open Eye Gallery. She has contributed to international academic forums including Campus for Climate Action (Bath Spa University), the Singapore Biennale Summit (2019), the Research Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale, Anthropocene Campus Venice (HKW), and The Curatorial Thing (Copenhagen).

She has taught and lectured widely in art and curatorial theory, media theory, and art and ecology at Goldsmiths, University of London; Manchester School of Art; The University of Edinburgh; Aarhus School of Architecture; The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts; and Bard College, New York.

She is currently developing two long-term curatorial research projects titled 'Decolonial Eco-Visualities (2021–ongoing)' and 'A Common World in Transition (2020–ongoing)'.

Tsionki serves on the Board of Trustees of East Street Arts and sits on the steering group of Hyde Park Art Club (Leeds), the Advisory Committee of 422 Arts (Manchester), and the Editorial Board of ARHIVO PAPERS (Journal of Photography and Visual Culture). She is a member of several international research and professional networks, including CIMAM, IKT – International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art, Anthropocene Commons, SAR (Artist Pedagogy Research subgroup), Curatorial Ethics Network (CEN), and the British Art Network.

Books

Tsionki, M., Chambers, P., eds, (2027) Ecofeminism and Art Today: Situated Knowledge in Times of Planetary Crisis, London: Routledge (forthcoming)

Cunha, M., Tsionki, M., eds, (2026) We live, like trees, in the footsteps of our ancestors, Berlin: K.Verlag. ISBN 978-3-947858-57-6

Tsionki, M., ed, (2024) Paula Chambers: Still. Stray. Stowaway, Copenhagen: Really Simple Syndication Press. ISBN 978-87-94538-12-1

Tsionki, M., ed, (2024) Sheila Gaffney: Embodied Dreaming, Copenhagen: Really Simple Syndication Press. ISBN 978-87-94538-04-6

Tsionki, M., ed, (2023) Kyriaki Goni: Data Garden, Copenhagen: Really Simple Syndication Press. ISBN 978-87-972365-7-4

Book Sections

Tsionki, M. (2027) ‘Towards an Ecological Institution’ in Andreas Philippopoulos Mihalopoulos & Swastee Ranjan, ed., Handbook on New Theories of Environmental Law, Cheltenham: Elgar Publishing (forthcoming)

Tsionki, M. (2026) ‘From climate activism to alter-institutional practices: art institutions in a shifting paradigm’ in Nataliya Tchermalykh, ed., Subversive Intrusions: Redefining the Museum through Activist Interventions, Oxfordshire: Routledge (forthcoming)

Tsionki, M. (2026) ‘Out of sight: sacrifice zones, resistance and the aesthetics of toxicviolence’ in Mariana Cunha, & Marianna Tsionki, eds., We live, like trees, in the footstepsof our ancestors, Berlin: K.Verlag. ISBN 978-3-947858-57-6

Tsionki, M. (2025) ‘Spirits, liquid bodies and more-than-human entities in Indigenous cosmologies’ in Paula Chambers, & Dawn Woolley, eds., Going Feral: A Proposition for a Speculative Animism in the arts, Delaware: Vernon Press. ISBN 979-8-8819-0322-0

Tsionki, M. (2022) ‘Porto Marghera: Working-class Environmentalism’, in Cristina Baldacci, and al, eds., Venice and the Anthropocene: An Ecocritical Guide. Venice: wetlands. ISBN 979-12-80930-24-8

Tsionki, M. (2022) ‘UNKNOWN FIELDS DIVISION — Rare Earthenware’ in Benek Cincik, Tiago Torres-Campos, eds., Postcards from the Anthropocene. Unsettling the Geopolitics of Representation, Barcelona: dpr-barcelona press. ISBN: 978-84-949388-7-0

Tsionki, M. (2021) ‘Imagined Mappings of Geopolitical Power: liquid borders, military infrastructures and ecological destruction in the South China Sea’ in Paul Gladston, Beccy Kennedy-Schtyk, Ming Turner, eds., Visual Culture Wars at the Borders of Contemporary China. London & Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-981-16-5292-9

Tsionki, M. (2018) ‘Visual Curatorial Research’ in Contemporary Research Intensive (The Contemporary Condition). Berlin: Sternberg Press. ISBN 978-3-95679-391-2 

Articles

Broadhead, S., Gonnet, H., and Tsionki, M. (2026) A Systematic Review of Arts Practice-Based Research Abstracts from Small and/or Specialist Institutions. Publications, 14 (1). ISSN 2304-6775

Tsionki, M. (2025). ‘Towards multispecies justice: non-anthropocentric ecocritical methods and practices.’ Holotipus rivista di zoologia sistematica e tassonomia VI (1) 2025.

Tsionki, M. (2018) ‘Curating the Anthropocene’, ANTENNAE: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture, Issue 43, Spring 2018 Pp.42-53.

Tsionki, M. (2017) ‘aaajiao, Remnants of an Electronic Past’, PUBLIC, spring 2017

Exhibitions

Radha D’Souza and Jonas Staal: Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes: The British East India Company on Trial (Blenheim Walk Gallery, Leeds, 2025)

Liminal Ecologies (transit.sk, Bratislava 2025)

Mixed Up: Music and the Art School (Blenheim Walk Gallery, Leeds, 2025)

Oliver Ressler: Hothouse Planet Breakout (Blenheim Walk Gallery, Leeds, 2024)

The School of Mutants (Blenheim Walk Gallery, Leeds, 2024)

We live, like trees, in the footsteps of our ancestors (Blenheim Walk Gallery, Leeds, 2023)

Marwa Arsanios: Who is Afraid of Ideology? (Blenheim Walk Gallery, Leeds, 2022)

Kyriaki Goni: Networks of Trust (SixtyEight Art Institute, Copenhagen, 2022)

Meteorological Mobilities (Apexart, New York, 2020)

A Cinematic Museum of the Everyday (Next Mixing, Shanghai, 2019)

Towards throw-away technology (Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2017)

Polyrhythmia (Castlefield Gallery NAS, Manchester, 2017)

Profile photograph by Jules Lister.