Arianna Nourse

private curation | public production

Arianna Nourse is the founder of Life Imitates, a London, England-based company that works with arts patrons on ethical acquisitions and cultural production, and with artists on curatorial and business strategy. Her practice aims to broaden our understanding of our world and ourselves through deep immersion in the arts.

Nourse is currently executive producer of In the Black Fantastic, a speculative fantasy film about Black genius by poet julianknxx ft. Ekow Eshun, Tina Campt, Arthur Jafa, Wangechi Mutu and other art and academic luminaries due for release in 2026.

She continues to regularly consult on the private collections of several high-profile global citizens who wish to remain anonymous.

Following her graduation from Columbia University, Nourse began her career at Phillips auction house in New York. She later became the company’s first Black specialist in contemporary art and photography, producing quarterly auctions and selling exhibitions in London.

Recently, Nourse curated A Requiem for Benevolent Beasts, a two person show of new paintings by Leyla Faye and Brianna Rose Brooks expanding the cathartic possibilities of tandem making and memory work; Respectability won’t save you: a Caribbean haunting, the New York solo debut of acclaimed Bajan-Scottish artist Alberta Whittle of newly conceived sculptural-paintings, writings and film that pushed against the contours of middle class respectability politics; and On Error and Continuity: Some Passing Thoughts, which considered the works of Adrian Piper, Sula Bermúdez-Silverman, and Alberta Whittle via the hybrid form of auto-biography, art criticism and poetry for Tiana Webb Evans's Jamaican-New York project Yard Concept.

Nourse was the inaugural cultural advisor to Southbank Tower, a residential property in London, and is a member of Entre Nous, an invitational association of Black female art dealers founded by White Cube’s Courtney Willis Blair. She sat on the inaugural committee of Frieze fair’s Frieze 91 in London; is the daughter of two artists; the mother of two children; and loves speculative fiction.