Magnificent Distance: Five Site-Specific Installations Washington DC 2012

5x5, Washington DC’s inaugural public art festival, was conceived as a flagship biennial in which five curators would each be invited to curate new site-specific artworks by five artists – leading to the simultaneous installation of twenty-five artworks across Washington DC. The primary research question explored in the curation of the five Magnificent Distance artworks was the slippage between the symbolic DC of the worldwide public imagination and the ‘domestic’, human DC with its complex histories and communities. Many of the exhibition sites, selected as part of my curatorial role, were at the interstices of these two DC realities – at the meeting point between federal and community environments, in locations undergoing transformation from one use to another, and at points where differing scales of architecture meet

‘A NewBridge Enquiry: The Politics of Participation and the Act of Invitation’:CANNED: A NewBridge Project Publication

A discussion of art event, 'A NewBridge Enquiry', with artists Toby Lloyd and Andrew Wilson, and CANNED editor Iris Priest. Discussion focused on the politics of art that involves public participation, on the nature of that 'public', and on the ability of art to constitute a form of (social) enquiry

Targeting HDAC6 to treat heart failure with preserved ejection fraction in mice

Abstract Heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) poses therapeutic challenges due to the limited treatment options. Building upon our previous research that demonstrates the efficacy of histone deacetylase 6 (HDAC6) inhibition in a genetic cardiomyopathy model, we investigate HDAC6’s role in HFpEF due to their shared mechanisms of inflammation and metabolism. Here, we show that inhibiting HDAC6 with TYA-018 effectively reverses established heart failure and its associated symptoms in male HFpEF mouse models. Additionally, in male mice lacking Hdac6 gene, HFpEF progression is delayed and they are resistant to TYA-018’s effects. The efficacy of TYA-018 is comparable to a sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitor, and the combination shows enhanced effects. Mechanistically, TYA-018 restores gene expression related to hypertrophy, fibrosis, and mitochondrial energy production in HFpEF heart tissues. Furthermore, TYA-018 also inhibits activation of human cardiac fibroblasts and enhances mitochondrial respiratory capacity in cardiomyocytes. In this work, our findings show that HDAC6 impacts on heart pathophysiology and is a promising target for HFpEF treatment