“Research-Based Exhibitions: Between Curatorial Spatiality and Space as Method,” PARSE 13.3 (Autumn 2021).
Analyzing the exhibition “Archiving the Spaces of Anxiety” as an exemplary response to the OCAT Institute’s call for research-based curatorial projects, this essay compares the curator Chen Shuyu’s proposition of “curatorial spatiality,” situated in the lineage of artistic research, with the historiography of experimental Chinese art from the 1980s. The latter has been studied extensively by art historian Wu Hung, who also serves as OCAT’s Director, and explains research-based exhibitions evoking his own curatorial endeavors on Chinese art. This juxtaposition of interpretative frameworks aims to reveal the shared questions of space and approaches toward totality, despite diverging historical and artistic contexts. Besides the two directions focused on, this essay also considers the plurality of knowledge systems, experimental methods, and archival potentials by examining the relationship between research and exhibition.
In the late summer of 2020 and 2021, I participated in the inaugural Al Balad Residency (Jeddah), initiated by Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Culture, while I develop a research and artistic project “Upstairs Map.”
Viral Transmission: A Medium in Between
“Viral Transmission: A Medium in Between,” a group exhibition curated by me exploring digital media and virality, is currently on show at the OCAT Institute, Beijing, as part of its 2020 “Research-Based Curatorial Project.”
Exhibiting artists: Bai Mengfan, Peer Bode, Joan Snitzer, Eric Souther, Zhang Hanwen.
http://www.ocatinstitute.org.cn/en/exhibitions/20/159
The exhibition runs from September 12th to December 6th, 2020.
To read the exhibition statement.
To view the press in CN/中文.
House Letters Issue 2: Absence and Presence
My article, “When Death Isn’t Elsewhere, and Neither Are We,” reflecting on Ragnar Kjartansson’s video installation has been included in House Letters Issue 2: Absence and Presence, Aug 2020.
House Letters (London) is an online publication project created by Bethany Holmes in response to this historical moment.
Access the article here.