Yirong Fan’s questions:
- Could you give me a more theoretical review of my curatorial method, exhibition themes, or exhibition practice?
- Could you give me any other practical advice on how to improve my exhibition practice with the limited budget? Or what would you do if you are preparing my exhibition?
Thank you for your effort on your exhibition Yirong. I have seen the development of your idea changes based on your ethical consideration. You think carefully and comprehensively. You did well on the artist’s contact and spaces. With all the information about physical space related to your project, you keep reflecting on how you could do better in a curator’s role. I like the thematic color of the exhibition and presentations. The expression has triggered fashion, cute, gentle, and dreamy. Thus, I could directly feel how the artists carefully designed for their beautiful grannies, and how they love their grannies within the interrelationship. Your exhibition aims to transfer the love of relationships with the elder group of people. It is a big and warm theme that nobody would refuse to have a look at, you are reaching a wider spectrum of audiences with your choice of theme. This is also a thoughtful point for you as a curator.
I would like to provide you with two suggestions that how you may improve your curatorial project. Firstly, you have mentioned curators make the final decisions and the gaps between curators and artists through power structure. Relatively, curators take the responsibility to build these gaps searching in different ways to determine how the audience meets with artworks. Therefore, curators need to think more rationally than artists with a comprehensive perspective to curate the exhibitions. The aim of curating is very important. The term ‘aesthetic potential’ to me is more likely to diverse subjective perspectives from the audiences. It is extensive to define beauty. If the exhibition aims to reinforce the beauty of consciousness in the elder group, is it deliberate emphasis or active discovery from the audience? Can curators provide an aesthetic perspectivism to their audiences instead of intuitive feelings? In the era of information technology, is there any other way to communicate a sense of beauty in photographs to the public?
Secondly, you emphasized the interrelationship of family affection in Chinese societies, the information in your brochure is limited to understanding the implicit concepts. How does your audience know about the interrelationship of family affection through differences of cultures? There are two methods to support the audience’s understanding of the artwork, one of the approaches is an artist interview to explore narratives related to the interrelationship between them and their grandmothers, and another approach is to use some form of object interview to explore granny’s narratives based on the role of things. The interview was an occasion to ask people to tell stories. When I look at the image of grannies, I am likely to know their narrative. The similarities in beauty between the ten artists are obvious. Thus, similar visual styles could dilute each granny’s story, and the specific identity of the narrative invokes an interaction between the audience and the artwork. Do you focus on different stories for each person or different versions of the same story?
Finally, I am looking forward to visiting Yirong’s exhibition.
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