Dr Gerdi Quist worked for 23 years as a Senior Lecturer at University College London where she taught Dutch language and courses on cultural complexity, multiculturalism, identities and interculturality. She has written Reading with my eyes open (UCL Press 2013) as well as a number of language textbooks and academic articles.
Taking time out to travel in 2013, cycling solo around the Black Sea - with a detour via Iran, she rediscovered her passion for the world, which had remained on a backburner during her academic life. In 2017 she finally took the plunge and left her job at University College London to focus on a more creative life. She has since completed a MA in Creative Writing and still remains involved at UCL as an Honorary Senior Lecturer.
Now she is living in Amsterdam using her time to write, learn, teach, share her experiences and apply her ideas on nomadism and posthumanism in relation to interculturality outside academia.
She also has recently discovered she loves to take part in art projects, going back to where she started her career in 1981 in the Netherlands as an art teacher.
Kimbal Quist Bumstead is an interdisciplinary artist based in London. He trained in Fine Art at the University of Leeds and the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, followed by a Masters degree in Performance and Theatre from Queen Mary University of London.
Kimbal’s work explores the use of drawing as a performative tool to capture subjective experience. His work has dealt with issues surrounding migration, nomadism, home, landscape, memory, fantasy and intimacy in the context of space and place.
His paintings are currently represented at the GX Gallery and Jane Newbery galleries in London. His paintings have been included in various corporate and private collections. He is an associate member of Livingmaps Network and is a freelance workshop leader. His written work has been published in various journals such as Livingmaps Review, Arhitext Magazine and Emergency Index and in learning resources for the Courthauld Gallery and the Live Art Development Agency. He has produced much of his artwork in the context of Artist in Residence projects including HaMiffal, Jerusalem, 3rd on 3rd New York, and Kosaten, Tokyo. Recent exhibitions include The Mall Galleries, GX Gallery, Crows Nest Gallery, Centre for Recent Drawing, Espacio Gallery, and the Griffin Gallery in London. Also Turner Contemporary Margate, Museum of Modern Art Espoo, and De Stoker Amsterdam.