This week, together with Yinuo and Ruoyun, I co-organized a group visit to the Collective Gallery’s Jerwood Survey III exhibition., I revisited my notes from Week 7 on Maud Sulter’s You Are My Kindred Spirit.
This prompted me to reflect on two distinct curatorial approaches:
a group survey exhibition showcasing emerging artists, and a solo exhibition centred on archival and documentary practice.
Meeting Process
Fieldwork: Jerwood Survey III
Jerwood Survey III adopts a constellation strategy, with works dispersed across the Collective’s three spaces—the City Dome, Hillside Gallery, and Library Gallery. This spatial arrangement naturally facilitates groupings of works without imposing explicit curatorial categories.
For example, in the Hillside Gallery, I encountered two works that explore female identity, historical memory, and cultural continuity:
Ebun Sodipo’s Left Hand of the Sisters is a sculptural installation mounted on a custom flocked base, incorporating hand imagery from the Black transgender female community. The work draws on spiritual symbolism in traditional African cultures—particularly the significance of the left hand in Meru traditions in Kenya—and explores how this connects to Black trans femininity and communal knowledge.
Ebun Sodipo, Left Hand of the Sisters, 2024
Aqsa Arif’s dynamic video installation reinterprets two iconic female figures from South Asian folklore—Umar Marvi, a moral heroine, and Churail, a ghostly witch—through the lens of refugee experience, highlighting the plurality and complexity of female identity.
Aqsa Arif – Marvi and the Churail (2024)
Juxtaposed, these two works generate an implicit dialogue on personal and cultural memory, revealing how different historical and diasporic narratives can intersect through lived experience, symbolism, and myth.
Comparative Insights:
Jerwood Survey III presents a fragmented collage of early-career artistic practices—engaging through its diversity, exploratory spirit, and contemporary relevance—whereas Maud Sulter’s Kindred Spirit offers a cohesive portrait of the artist’s personal archive, emphasizing immersion and intimacy.
Maud Sulter – You are my kindred spirit, Tramway (2024). Installation photo – Keith Hunter
This comparison helped me understand how different curatorial decisions—from methods of selection to spatial design and interpretive tools—directly shape the audience’s engagement with the exhibition’s concept.
Perhaps my own exhibition could adopt a hybrid format: one that maintains a strong narrative thread (like Sulter’s use of sound), while also offering multiple, situated voices (as seen in a survey-style approach).
Refenrence:
Jerwood Survey III: https://www.collective-edinburgh.art/programme/jerwood-survey-iii
Maud Sulter – You are my kindred spirit: https://www.tramway.org/live-programme-maud-sulter-you-are-my-kindred-spirit/
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