Erika Dalya Massaquoi

Drawing on her deep expertise in immersive experience design, emergent technologies, and cinematic storytelling, Erika Dalya Massaquoi curates Taking Tea—a site-specific, multisensory installation that reimagines The Porcelain Room at the Seattle Art Museum. Through the integration of soundscapes, bespoke scent elements, and ceramic art, the exhibition creates a fully immersive environment that unveils the hidden costs behind global luxury, blurring the line between beauty and brutality, elegance and exploitation.

Massaquoi’s curatorial approach is grounded in rigorous interdisciplinary training. In addition to her Ph.D. in Cinema and New Media Studies, she earned a Certificate in Culture and Media from NYU’s Center for Media, Culture, and History, where she focused on the intersections of visual culture, anthropology, and technology.

With Taking Tea, Massaquoi builds on a career defined by innovative, audience-centered exhibition strategies across leading cultural institutions—from the Whitney Museum of American Art to the Museum of the Moving Image. Her practice is globally informed and culturally responsive, consistently pushing the boundaries of traditional museum interpretation.

Featuring the work of British ceramic artist Claire Partington, Taking Tea nods to both the opulence and exploitation inherent in the global porcelain and tea trades. Partington’s original ceramic figures—engaged in the genteel ritual of “taking tea”—are interwoven with historical fragments salvaged from 17th- and 18th-century shipwrecks. Together, these elements expose the human cost and precarious realities of the international trade routes that once fueled Europe’s obsession with Chinese porcelain.

Set within the Porcelain Room—home to more than 1,000 European and Asian porcelain works—this installation invites visitors to move beyond passive viewing into a richly sensorial journey through hidden histories, global economies, and the lived human experience behind objects of luxury.