Week 12 | Final Synthesis — The Curatorial Gaze as Care
1.From Scale to Intimacy
This semester has been a journey of recalibrating my curatorial gaze. In Week 1, I was preoccupied with institutional scale and the cold authority of grand galleries. However, the ECA exhibition confirmed that successful curation is not about filling space, but about managing relationships. Whether through the Ji Ju Collective’s “Our Shell” or my individual project “Awareness,” I have learned that a curator’s role is that of a translator, one who mediates between the silent history of objects and the loud expectations of the public.
The core of my learning lies in the synthesis of collaboration and materiality. The Ji Ju exhibition, “Our Shell,” taught me the ethics of flawed cohesion that curating is often a series of concessions that ultimately create a shared home for diverse voices. This collective experience laid the groundwork for my individual proposal, where I treat everyday materials as weighty presences.
Reflecting on the ECA exhibition’s Sculpture Court, I now see the site not as a fixed container, but as a relational field. My proposal to use Custom Lane for “Awareness” reflects this. It is a move away from the “White Cube” toward a space where materials like Jiang Miao’s carvings or Guo Puyi’s modules can accompany the public in their daily lives. Curating is no longer about organizing objects for me; it is about maintaining relationships between people, materials, and the spaces they temporarily inhabit.
2.Final Reflection
Looking back, my initial posts were too diary-like. Through tutor feedback, I realized that a curator must be a researcher, not just an observer.
My final project serves as a manifesto for my growth. I’ve moved from writing to myself in a diary to demonstrating the depth of my learning through critical synthesis. The “Awareness” I propose is my own curatorial shell: a structure of attention that values friction over smoothness. Moving forward, I see myself as a transitive curator who, like the hermit crab, finds strength in the temporary and the material, rather than the permanent and the institutional. I now embrace this flaw.
My proposal does not seek to provide a perfect spiritual therapy but a site for friction and reorientation. As I conclude this blog, my curatorial gaze is no longer a distant observation, but an active, ethical commitment to linking life and making visible.
