Week 9 ｜Curating as Redistribution: Participation, Materiality, and Change
1.From Concept to Situated Practice
Week 9 marks a critical moment where my curatorial thinking is realised through the exhibition Our Shell at Summerhall. The project shifts from a conceptual exploration of “home” towards a situated practice shaped by material, audience interaction, and spatial conditions. Rather than presenting a fixed narrative, the exhibition operates as an open system in which meaning is continuously produced through participation.
2. Participation and the Ethics of Taking
A key curatorial decision in Our Shell is to invite audience interaction, particularly through works that can be altered over time. However, rather than celebrating participation uncritically, the exhibition considers its ethical dimension: what does it mean to take from an artwork?
This question is particularly relevant in my installation, Sweetness Within the Shell, where viewers are invited to take candies. The act of taking is not neutral; it introduces absence, redistribution, and loss. In this sense, participation becomes a form of negotiation rather than simple engagement.
As Nicolas Bourriaud argues, “in relational art, the audience is envisaged as a community. Rather than the artwork being an encounter between a viewer and an object, relational art produces encounters between people. Through these encounters, meaning is elaborated collectively, rather than in the space of individual consumption. “
Sweetness Within the Shell, 2026
Mixed-media installation: wrapped candies, candy wrappers, floor arrangement
Variable dimensions (four shell-shaped units)
Artist: siqixue
Installation view, Our Shell, Summerhall, Edinburgh, 2026
3.Material as a Way of Thinking
The exhibition also reflects a shared curatorial approach among participating artists: a commitment to material as a mode of thinking. This aligns with practices such as Mono-ha. “Founding member Lee observed that an artist’s ability to make things had been nullified by technology. As a result, he rejected traditional ideas of representation in favour of revealing the world as it is by engaging with materials and exploring their properties.”
In Sweetness Within the Shell, candy functions not only as a symbolic object but as an active material. Its consumable nature introduces temporality and instability into the work. As the candies are removed, the installation becomes a site of ongoing transformation, challenging the idea of the artwork as a stable entity.
4.Collective Practice and Curatorial Method
Working within the collective has been central to the development of Our Shell. Curatorial decisions, ranging from spatial arrangement to thematic framing, were shaped through negotiation and dialogue. This reflects a broader understanding of curating as a collaborative and process-based practice rather than an individual authorship.
Importantly, the exhibition format moves beyond a single-artist focus, instead creating a multi-voiced environment that better aligns with contemporary curatorial discourse.
Notes
1. “Relational art,”Wikipedia, accessed March 22, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_art#cite_note-19.
2. “MONO-HA,” The Board of Trustees of the Tate Gallery, accessed March22, 2026, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/m/mono-ha.
