DJCS

DJCS is a curator based in Te Whanganui a Tara, and the founder of COMMODE, an independent gallery dedicated to experimental, critical, and discursive practice. Their work engages queer theory and institutional critique, treating exhibition making as a mode of inquiry that foregrounds complexity, political consciousness, and the slow work of building alternative infrastructures.

Through COMMODE, DJCS is cultivating a practice that centres rigorous thinking, community grounded in difference, and the rejection of reductive or market driven approaches to contemporary art. Their curatorial projects, writing and research position COMMODE as a site for investigation into the conditions that shape and constrain cultural production in Aotearoa.

They were Director of Enjoy Contemporary Art Space (2022–2025); Assistant Curator, Artspace Aotearoa (2021–2022); Founder and Director, Parasite (2020–2022); Co-Director, RM Gallery and Projectspace (2016–2018); and worked worked within and alongside public, commercial, and artist-run galleries in Aotearoa since 2012.

DJCS’ practice has evolved through sustained collaboration with artists, writers, and communities, and through navigating the structural pressures that shape contemporary cultural work. Their professional history grounds their commitment to building critically engaged infrastructures that expand what a gallery, an artwork, or a community can be.