Week 11 Blog (2) | Collective Discussion on Curatorial Projects
A group photo of participants at the last Collective Space in Summer Hall on April 5, 2025.
Through this week’s collective space, we discussed the problems and difficulties in our respective curatorial projects and found that most of the problems were highly overlapping. The following is my summary of this exchange meeting：
1. Reflection on the Search for Artists and Curatorial Thinking
• Core problem:
Most group members think that the process of searching for artists is challenging, which exposes the lack of curatorial thinking of some students.
• My key reflection:
For me, my problem is: curation should focus on the interactive relationship between artworks, artists and exhibition themes. And it is necessary to emphasize the importance of research and field investigation.
I need to further analyze the reasons for the errors in site selection analysis and how to strengthen the core of curation through design elements, sound audio, explanatory materials and spatial transition.
And I discussed with Yuewen Sun, a member of the same feminist curatorial theme, how to strengthen curatorial decision-making and tap the potential of feminist space and sound themes.
2. Inspiration from Communication with Other Students
• Adjustment of display method: Yuge Dai said: The history of art therapy can be integrated into the exhibition manual and placed at the entrance as background information and souvenirs. Similarly, I can collect the “voices” of women being unfairly treated in the family as an atmosphere rendering before the exhibition.
• Reflection on curatorial positioning: We can find innovative ways to redefine the role and tasks of curators within the constraints of reality.
• Artist selection: Switch from well-known artists to three emerging artists to adapt to the problem of budget and work matching.
• Practical difficulties: When looking for work materials, we face challenges such as incomplete information and missing official websites. We can conduct further field investigations to make our curatorial decisions more accurate.
• Optimization of curatorial strategy: Further adjust the exhibition structure by realizing the importance of the connection between works.
3. Problems that Still Need to be Solved
• Adjustment of exhibition format: Switch from traditional group exhibitions to workshop models to cope with curatorial ethics, resource constraints and narrative rigidity.
• Realistic problems: The current main difficulties include the specific form of workshop settings and the production of exhibition floor plans, because Listen Gallery currently cannot find specific floor plans on the Internet.
• Spatial planning thinking: Emphasize the interactive relationship between the floor plan and the layout of the works, which has a direct impact on the order and guidance of the audience’s participation in the exhibition and the audience’s experience.
• Blog writing: Blogs should focus on reflection and theoretical transformation of the research process; curatorial concepts should be critical and experimental.
