1.Introduction: From Looking to Perceiving

At the beginning of this semester, my understanding of the countermeasure exhibition is mainly at the level of visual arrangement: selecting works, placing them in space, and creating meaning through sorting. This assumption began to shift during a visit to the SSA 127th Annual Exhibition at the Royal Scottish Academy, where I noticed that the institutional scale of the space did not automatically produce a stronger experience for the viewer.

As Terry Smith argues, Contemporary curatorial practice is no longer limited to the institutional framework of museums, and no longer strictly distinguishes between curatorial work with collection and protection as the core and simple exhibition production. On the contrary, the connotation of curation has been extended to a variety of practical forms, including project planning in different alternative spaces and associated with experimental art space.¹

This observation reminds me of a more fundamental question: what kind of experience can the exhibition bring to visitors?

This reflective essay examines two curatorial projects developed this semester. The first is Our Shell, a group exhibition presented at Summerhall, Edinburgh, produced collaboratively by the Ji Ju Collective. The second is Awareness Through Materiality, an individual curatorial proposal for a group show at Custom Lane, Edinburgh, centring on works by Jiang Miao, Suyon Huh, and Guo Puyi.

These two projects together make me realize that curation is not a visual perception, but a physical practice: it focuses on how space, time and materials shape the attention and senses of visitors.

 

2.The Collective Shell: Curating as Spatial Habitation

The Ji Ju Collective takes its name from the Chinese concept of Ji Ju (寄居）, which describes the condition of living away from one’s original home, in a space that belongs to someone else. This condition shaped every decision in Our Shell, from the choice of title to the spatial arrangement of works inside the Summerhall gallery room.

The exhibition brings together the paintings, textiles and mixed media works of the collective members, and physically connects them through the red line that runs through the entire exhibition hall. The red line is a low-cost material device, but its function is spatial and relational: it makes the distance between the works visible and crossable.

Gaston Bachelard’s writing on the poetics of intimate space offers a useful framework for reflecting on what the collective attempted.

Bachelard argues ：“With nests and, above all, shells, we shall find a whole series of images that I am going to try to characterize as primal images; images that bring out the primitiveness in us. I shall then show that a human being likes to “withdraw into his corner,” and that it gives him physical pleasure to do so.” ²

The shell, for Bachelard,  is not a fixed residence, but movable. It moves with the creatures that carry it. Our Shell drew on this logic directly. Ji Ju Collective temporarily built a gallery to fill the space with items from the members’ respective cultural backgrounds, and connect these items through red lines to create a collective atmosphere. However, the curation process is not smooth sailing, and team members need to weigh between their personal artistic style and the coherence of the common theme to decide which works to be exhibited.

Jean-Paul Martinon describes this tension as intrinsic to all curatorial work: exhibitions always give the impression of cohesion when in fact what is displayed is the result of compromises, concessions, and trade-offs between contributing parties.³

The candy installation Sweetness Within the Shell, which I contributed to the exhibition, added another layer of reflection. Visitors can use the shell-shaped candies on the wall at will. As they use candy, the shape of the shell will gradually change and eventually disappear.

Sandra Umathum notes：“Instead, these installations put into perspective the traditional subject-object relation. They divert attention away from themselves and share it with, or distribute it to, the inter-subjective encounters taking place at their edges.”⁴

This candy work fits this logic, but also complicates it. The access behavior introduces the concept of absence, and the slow disappearance of the placed object shows the time in a way that static objects cannot reach. This shows that the exhibition is not only a space to stay, but also a place that changes in the process of use.

 

3.Curating Attention: Material Friction and the Slowing of Time

The curatorial concept for Awareness Through Materiality grew from a concern with how attention operates under conditions of urban acceleration.

Hartmut Rosa points out that the widespread perception of time scarcity and the accelerated pace of social life in modern society cannot be fully explained by objective or quantifiable definitions alone, but should be understood as a complex socio-psychological phenomenon influenced by cultural factors. ⁵ Against this background, the exhibition proposes a different model of perceptual art: in this mode, the material is slow and durable, and requires continuous viewing. The three artists selected for Awareness Through Materiality each work with materials that resist quick reading.

Jiang Miao repeatedly smeared acrylic paint on aluminum plates and wooden boards and painted them. In order to understand the content of the work, the viewer must approach the work, adjust the angle, and take time to observe it carefully. This does not invite the audience to view images in the traditional way, but requires the audience to pay attention to the physical surface of the object.

Tim Ingold describes：“Whenever we read that in the making of artefacts, practitioners impose forms internal to the mind upon a material world ‘out there’, hylomorphism is at work.”⁶ The surface of the artworks portrayed by Jiang Miao retains the evidence of this process, while the curation arranges the artworks in a way that allows the audience to enter the slow perception.

Suyon Huh works with paper pulp, hanji, rope, and string to build installations that are visually delicate but spatially tense. In Phone Phobia, the telephone is fixed by pulp and wire rope in a frame composed of wooden pillars, and its configuration makes the tension of the whole structure visible.

Jane Bennett suggests that materiality possesses its own vitality, not as something animated from outside, but as an active force that disrupts the idea of matter as inert and passive.⁷ In this work, the rope is tightened, the pulp is glued, and the wooden frame is fixed. This structure highlights the power rather than the form. The device does not express tension, but embodys the tension, which can make the viewer truly perceive how the matter itself exerts its power.

Juhani Pallasmaa argues :“However, the privileging of sight does not necessarily imply a rejection of the other senses, as the haptic sensibility, materiality and authoritative weight of Greek architecture prove; the eye invites and stimulates muscular and tactile sensations.”⁸ 

This argument shaped the sequencing decision in Awareness: Jiang’s surfaces come first, demanding closeness and time; Huh’s tension-based works follow; and Guo Puyi’s modular installations close the exhibition. Each part prepares for the next part by adjusting the rhythm of the audience’s movement in space.

 

4. Decentring the Viewer: Object Agency and Spatial Reorientation

The third section of Awareness was designed around the work of Guo Puyi, whose practice sits at the intersection of sculpture and what Lambros Malafouris describes as MET: an approach in which understanding emerges through direct interaction with materials rather than through detached analysis. ⁹

A cage that holds nothing, a rocking horse made from iron that cannot be ridden: these objects perform their expected forms while refusing their expected uses. At the same time, these elements evoke associations with family life, games and restraint, but they cannot be fixed by a single interpretation.

As Bill Brown suggests, things are not simply objects, but emerge through a shift in the relationship between subject and object.¹⁰

The meaning of the work comes from the movement of the viewer around the work. Through changes in scale, balance and distance, the work reveals the interdependence or confrontation between various components.

Alfred Gell argues that the agency attributed to artworks is inherently social and relational: art objects do not act as autonomous agents, but acquire a form of secondary agency through their entanglement with human actors and specific social contexts.¹¹

Guo’s installations work in this way. The arrangement of cages, rocking horses and steel geometry creates a situation in which the viewer must explore the relationship between these objects by himself, rather than accepting the pre-set interpretation. This active identification process itself is a concern.

Miwon Kwon argues that modernist conceptions of neutral, idealised space were displaced by an understanding of art as situated within real, everyday environments, where works are experienced through the viewer’s embodied presence in space and time rather than through detached visual perception.¹²

In summary, this reflects the transformation of curatorial mode from watching to spatial participation. The audience is no longer a bystander who is out of the matter, but a participant who is constantly affected by material relationships through physical movement, perception and judgment. Therefore, the exhibition no longer provides the established meaning, but builds an interactive field in which things, space and the audience create experiences together.

5.Embodied Encounters: The Physicality of Curation

Changing from a passive observer to an active participant requires a deeper understanding of phenomenology in the context of the gallery.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty established that the body and the senses reveal a form of collective existence in which embodied subjectivity, while remaining singular and situated, extends beyond itself to generate meanings that structure perception, thought, and experience.¹³ In my project, this means not to regard the gallery as a container of images, but as a place where matter and consciousness meet.

In Our Shell, the red line acted as a haptic guide, forcing the body to navigate the space in relation to the distance between objects.

Claire Bishop argues that contemporary participatory art reconfigures artistic production: the artist is no longer understood as a sole maker of discrete objects but as a collaborator who produces situations, the artwork shifts from a bounded and commodifiable object to an open-ended process, and the audience is repositioned from passive viewer to active co-producer.¹⁴

Similarly, in Awareness Through Materiality, the sequencing of Jiang Miao’s works can be understood through David Freedberg and Vittorio Gallese’s theory of embodied simulation, the theory believes that aesthetic perception triggers the viewer’s automatic physical reaction, especially the perception of action, stress or potential movement in the work, thus producing simulated resonance at the physical level.¹⁵

6.Curatorial Sites as Social Assemblages

The experience of planning these two exhibitions made me realize that exhibitions are never neutral; they are a collection of human and non-human participants.

Bruno Latour argues that the social should not be understood as a fixed domain, but as a set of shifting associations, in which relations are continuously reconfigured through changing connections and arrangements.¹⁶

In this sense, curatorial practice can be understood as an assembly structure, in which space, materials, curatorial decision-making and the audience jointly produce meaning.

However, looking back at my two projects from this theory also reveals the problems in them.

Graham Harman argues that art does not simply strip away an object’s contingent qualities to reveal its essence; rather, it actively brings the viewer and the aesthetic object into relation, producing a new, composite entity.¹⁷

In Our Shell, the red thread was intended to connect works and symbolise collective inhabitation.However, by trying to plan a sense of intimacy, am I inadvertently ignoring the artist’s personal emotions just to pursue a unified narrative?

In addition, using familiar items to evoke a sense of common home may simplify the complex life experience.Sara Ahmed argues：“The work of inhabitance involves orientation devices; ways of extending bodies into spaces that create new folds, or new contours of what we could call livable or inhabitable space. ”¹⁸

In Awareness Through Materiality, the rhythm of viewing is slowed down through the slowness of materials, but this strategy also has limitations.

As Nicholas Mirzoeff argues：“The right to look claims autonomy from this authority, refuses to be segregated, and spontaneously invents new forms. ” ¹⁹ Therefore, the expectation of long-term viewing may exclude audiences who are not familiar with such perceptions.

At the same time, the emphasis on materiality may also weaken the diversity of interpretation.

Rancière cautions that the impulse to draw spectators out of passivity and into active participation can itself become a form of imposition: the assumption that viewers require a carefully constructed situation in order to know what to do, or how to feel, reproduces the very hierarchy it claims to dismantle.²⁰

Reflecting on Awareness Through Materiality, this tension becomes difficult to ignore. By constructing deliberate material progression in space, I assume that a specific sequence is necessary, which can guide the audience to a slower and more focused perception.

7.Conclusion: The Exhibition as a Living Ecology

This semester has shifted my understanding of curating from the organisation of objects toward the orchestration of attention. The two projects discussed in this article discuss this topic from different perspectives.

Our Shell worked through collective inhabitation, using familiar objects, red thread, and shared process to transform an institutional gallery into a temporary home.

Awareness Through Materiality resistance and spatial sequencing, proposing an exhibition in which slowing down is not a request made of the visitor but a condition built into the encounter with the works themselves. The project arouses people’s consciousness through material resistance and spatial sequence, aiming to create an exhibition that allows visitors to slow down. This is not a requirement for visitors, but an inherent condition when encountering the work itself.

Brian O’Doherty’s analysis of the gallery space remains relevant here. O’Doherty argues：“The eye is abstracted from an anchored body and projected as a miniature proxy into the picture to inhabit and test the articulations of its space. ”²¹

Here, works of art are no longer passive objects waiting to be examined, space is no longer a silent background, and the audience is no longer a bystander who passes by in a hurry. Objects, space and people, through collision, friction and stay, weave a continuous flow and vibrant life experience.

 

Notes：

 

1. Terry Smith, Thinking Contemporary Curating (La Vergne: Independent Curators International, 2012), 2.

2. Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, trans. M. Jolas, foreword by Mark Z. Danielewski, introduction by Richard Kearney (New York: Penguin Books, 2015), 118–119.

3. Jean-Paul Martinon, Curating as Ethics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2020), xxii.

4. Sandra Umathum, “Given the Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s Case: The Art of Placing a Different Idea of Participation at Our Disposal,” Performance Research 16, no. 3 (2011): 97.

5. Hartmut Rosa, “What Is Social Acceleration?” in Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 80.

6. Tim Ingold, Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture (London: Routledge, 2013), 4.

7. Jane Bennett, “Preface,” in Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), xiii.

8. Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses, 4th ed. (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2025), 20.

9. Lambros Malafouris, How Things Shape the Mind: A Theory of Material Engagement (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013), 43–44.

10. Bill Brown, “Thing Theory,” Critical Inquiry 28, no. 1 (2001): 4.

11. Alfred Gell, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2023), 17.

12. Miwon Kwon, One Place after Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002), 11.

13. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (London: Routledge, 2002), 146.

14. Claire Bishop, Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (London: Verso, 2012), 21–22.

15. David Freedberg and Vittorio Gallese, “Motion, Emotion and Empathy in Esthetic Experience,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 11, no. 5 (2007): 201.

16. Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 73–74.

17. Graham Harman, Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything (London: Pelican Books, 2019), 33–34.

18. Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), 11.

19. Nicholas Mirzoeff, The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 4.

20. Jacques Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator, trans. Gregory Elliott (London: Verso, 2012), 5.

21. Brian O’Doherty, “Notes on the Gallery Space,” in Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space, expanded ed., ed. Brian O’Doherty and Thomas McEvilley (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 18.

 

Bibliography

Ahmed, Sara. Queer Phenomenology : Orientations, Objects, Others. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006.

Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter : A Political Ecology of Things. Durham, [N.C: Duke University Press, 2010.

Bishop, Claire. Artificial Hells : Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship. London: Verso, 2012.

Brown, Bill. “Thing Theory.” Critical Inquiry (CHICAGO) 28, no. 1 (October 2001): 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1086/449030.

Freedberg, David, and Vittorio Gallese. “Motion, Emotion and Empathy in Esthetic Experience.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences (LONDON) 11, no. 5 (May 2007): 197–203. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2007.02.003.

Gell, Alfred. Art and Agency : An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198280132.001.0001.

Harman, Graham. Object-Oriented Ontology : A New Theory of Everything. London: Pelican Books, 2019. https://www.vlebooks.com/product/openreader?id=Edinburgh&accId=9137656&isbn=9780241269176.

Ingold, Tim. Making : Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. London ; Routledge, 2013.

Kwon, Miwon. One Place after Another : Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity. Cambridge, Mass. ; MIT Press, 2002.

Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social : An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Malafouris, Lambros. How Things Shape the Mind : A Theory of Material Engagement. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2017.

Martinon, Jean-Paul. Curating as Ethics. Minneapolis, Minnesota ; University of Minnesota Press, 2020.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge Classics, 2002. http://www.vlebooks.com/vleweb/product/openreader?id=Edinburgh&isbn=9780203994610.

Mirzoeff, Nicholas. The Right to Look : A Counterhistory of Visuality. Durham, N.C: Duke University Press, 2011.

O’Doherty, Brian. Inside the White Cube : The Ideology of the Gallery Space. Expanded edition. Berkeley ; University of California Press, 2000.

Pallasmaa, Juhani. The Eyes of the Skin : Architecture and the Senses. Fourth edition. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781394200702.

Rancière, Jacques, and Gregory Elliott. The Emancipated Spectator. London: Verso, 2012.

Rosa, Hartmut, and Jonathan Trejo-Mathys. Social Acceleration : A New Theory of Modernity. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2013. https://doi.org/10.7312/rosa14834.

Smith, Terry, and Independent Curators International. Thinking Contemporary Curating. New York: Independent Curators International, 2013.

Umathum, Sandra. “Given the Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s Case: The Art of Placing a Different Idea of Participation at Our Disposal.” Performance Research (ABINGDON) 16, no. 3 (September 2011): 94–98. https://doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2011.606032.

 

 

AWARENESS THROUGH MATERIALITY

Custom Lane, Edinburgh, UK

June 15-22, 2026

 

1. Curatorial Narrative:

In contemporary urban life in pursuit of efficiency, matter is often simplified into functional tools. The materiality of perception in this exhibition refuses to regard perception as abstract psychological comfort, and reshapes it into a concrete viewing practice. By considering everyday materials as weighted existences, we explore how the way we treat material things projects our attitude towards ourselves and others.

The exhibition guides bodily pacing through three stages: companionship, friction, and decentring.The exhibition guides bodily pacing through three stages: companionship, friction, and decentring. Jiang Miao carves acrylic layers on aluminum panels; these traces act as quiet companions, prompting viewers to slow down through touch and breath. Following this, Suyon Huh constructs a physical field using pulp and ropes, materializing invisible anxiety into visible spatial pulling forces that break daily comfort through resistance. Finally, Guo Puyi utilizes fallen leaves and steel modules to reorganize visual logic, diverting attention from human-centered urgency and prompting us to reposition ourselves within a broader material network.

Materials should not be isolated from the institutional distance, but should accompany the audience in daily life. The exhibition was chosen to be held in Custom Lane, a community creative space, aiming to make natural encounters the beginning of perception.

 

2. Artists and selected works

A) Jiang Miao

Born in Jilin in 1981, China, Jiang Miao specialises in contemporary Woodblock Printmaking. She graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing with a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Printmaking. Now she is Teaching at Central Academy of Fine Arts. Drawing from her background in fine arts painting and academic exploration of various genres, such as realism and woodprint, Jiang Miao has developed her distinct artistic style through years of experimenting with different creative techniques.

 

 

B) Suyon Huh

Born in 1993 in Seoul, South Korea. She is an artist currently living and working in Seoul. Her works materialize everyday fears, absences, and fictitious orders into tangible material systems: papier-mâché, string, thread, Korean paper, watercolor, and oil painting overlays. They look light, but actually form a pulled structure in the space, causing the audience to experience physical tension and self-projection. She is responsible for the transition between the second and third sections of the exhibition: from being soothed to being pulled back to reality.

 

 

C) Guo Puyi

Born in 2002, from Fujian, China. He is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Contemporary Art Practice at the University of Edinburgh and lives and works in Edinburgh. Guo Puyi is responsible for pushing the exhibition to the third level of awareness: the material not only accompanies it, but also organizes the space in turn, forcing us to adjust the way we see. In particular, he turned the text, structure and splicing system into a scalable installation logic, making the audience realize that the relationship between people and the real materials of the world is not a slogan, but a kind of repeated construction and maintenance.

 

 

3. Location and Layout Design

The exhibition will take place on the space of Custom Lane, Edinburgh. According to the floor plan provided, the site consists of two main galleries and an entrance area with spiral staircases. This non-traditional gallery layout aims to eliminate institutional distance and emphasize the natural encounter between material and daily community life.

• Entrance area (at the spiral staircase): The audience enters from here, and this area serves as a psychological buffer space for the transition from the busy environment to the perceived state.

• First Gallery (34.88m²) – Stage 1: Companionship (Jiang Miao):This exhibition hall focuses on displaying Jiang Miao’s works. Acrylic carving board is installed on the long wall of the exhibition hall. The relatively closed space structure helps to create a quiet atmosphere and guide the audience to observe the details and breathing rhythm in the engraving at close range.

• Second Gallery (41.86m²) – Stage 2 & 3: Friction and Decentring (Suyon Huh & Guo Puyi):This is the largest area in the space, and the rows of windows on the left bring in natural light.

• Central Space – Friction (Suyon Huh): Taking advantage of the openness of the exhibition hall, Suyon Huh’s rope installations and paintings stretch between the ground and the wall to form a physical barrier with tension. The audience walked through it and intuitively experienced the materialized presentation of anxiety. 

• Window-side and Exit Zone – Decentring (Guo Puyi): Guo Puyi’s modular installation is arranged in the corner of the exhibition hall and near the final exit. These works use natural light and modular structural logic as the return point of the exhibition, guiding the audience to re-examine their position in the material network before leaving.

 

 

4. Public Programme

The programme is low-cost and designed to reduce barriers without over-explaining the works.

• Sensory Walk-through

• Lead: Led by a trained curator.

• Timing: 30-minute sessions held twice per week on Day 2 and Day 5

• Target Audience: Local community members and general visitors seeking low-barrier engagement.
  

• Summary:The guide avoids the academic background of art history and guides the audience to observe the weight, texture and physical presence of the material through questions. This way encourages the audience to establish intuitive perception instead of relying on interpretation.

• Fees: Facilitators receive professional fees from the £600 operational budget, reflecting the project’s ethical commitment to labor.
  

• Material Workshop 

• Lead: hosted by professional workshop tutors or part-time educators.

• Timing: 45-minute practical course arranged on the fourth day of the exhibition week. 

• Target Audience: Leith residents, students, and creative practitioners interested in tactile, hands-on activities.

• Summary: Participants only use paper and ropes to build temporary structures to test physical tension and spatial resistance. This activity transforms the logic of Suyon Huh’s installation works into practical creative practices.

• Fees: Facilitators receive professional fees from the £600 operational budget, reflecting the project’s ethical commitment to labor.
  

 

 

5. Curatorial Rationale

This project is based on the criticism of the tendency of material functionalization in contemporary urban life. The curatorial logic is deeply inspired by the Mono-ha concept, emphasizing that the weight, scale and spatial relationship of matter itself is the carrier of meaning, not just as an illustration of external language. By setting the exhibition dynamic line to a perceptual sequence from companionship to friction to decentralized, this plan aims to transform perception from abstract psychological healing into a concrete physical practice.

The choice of Custom Lane as the venue, rather than a traditional white-cube gallery, forms the critical core of this project. While the white cube often signifies institutional distance and authoritative models, and the community attributes and life atmosphere of Custom Lane create the necessary conditions for the natural encounter of material things. If the essence of perception lies in the reconstruction of attention in daily situations, then the exhibition space must resist the closed model and embrace the symbiosis with daily life.

At the ethical level, this project adheres to the budget management of seeking truth from facts, and regards artist expenses, transportation and insurance as insurmountable budget red lines to reflect respect for artistic labor. Artists choose those who do not explain a specific theme, but use the material as the practitioner of the way of thinking itself. In addition, the exhibition is committed to eliminating elite art barriers and ensuring that auxiliary facilities can provide access paths for a wider range of groups by setting up low-threshold sensory tours and material workshops.

 

6. Budget 

 

Item	Estimate (GBP)	Rationale
Venue hire — Custom Lane	£1,932	£276 × 7 days
Venue tech / staffing contingency	£600	Basic ops, cleaning, equipment add-ons
Artist fees / loan fees (3 artists)	£3,000	£1,000 each, respecting labour and permissions
Transport and packing	£1,600	Local courier + lightweight international packing
Insurance (artworks + public liability)	£700	Conservative placeholder pending quotes
Installation and materials	£900	Plinth tweaks, fixings, labels, minor lighting
Graphics and print	£450	A2 poster set + in-space print
Documentation (photo/video)	£550	One on-site documentation session
Accessibility and translation	£300	Bilingual text, alt text, text guide
Contingency (~10%)	£968	Buffer
TOTAL	£10,000	Balanced

 

7. Funding Sources

The following foundations have been identified as realistic candidates based on their eligibility criteria, funding ranges, and the nature of this project.

Amount available: £500–£50,000 (rolling deadline, no fixed closing date). This project would apply for approximately £10,000.

website:https://www.creativescotland.com/funding/funding-programmes/open-funding/open-fund-for-individuals

 

 

 

 

Han Qiu’s blog represents a sophisticated evolution from an art history student to a critical curator. Her work is characterized by a rigorous synthesis of sociopolitical theory and digital ethics,  treats the exhibition space as a site for urgent socio-political inquiry.

 

1.Strengths: 

Professional Operationality : The Week 6 Pitch is a standout. Including a detailed budgetand a multi-layered public program (AI Identity workshop, Data Ethics Lab) is a masterstroke. It demonstrates that curating is a production of social relations and financial logistics, not just selecting pretty things.

Narrative Cohesion: The blog transitions naturally from institutional critique to technological critique and finally to accessibility, forming a logically self-consistent research loop.

 

2.Areas for Further Strengthening

Visual Annotation :While the blog images are evocative, they lack visual critical annotations. As a curator, Qiu should mark up these images to show the reader exactly what her curatorial gaze is identifying.

The Sensory Gap: The blog is intellectually dense but could be more grounded in sensory experience. For a physical exhibition at Summer hall, how do we make the Algorithmic Gaze feel visceral? More diagrams on lighting, sound, and audience flow would bridge this gap.

Deeper Cross-disciplinary Dialogue: In the Week 5 dialogue with CAP students, the author could further analyze how artists reciprocally shape the curatorial logic, rather than  recording the conversation process.

Metaphorical Connection: The link between AI surveillance and the Ji Ju collective theme could be tightened. How does an algorithm inhabit or displace a migrant body?

 

Digital vs. Material: Qiu’s digital shell (the algorithm) perfectly complements my focus on physical shell (materiality). It’s a reminder that as sojourners, we inhabit both physical and data-driven structures.

Archive as Care:  Her concept of writing in the margins in week 8  encourages me to embrace fragmentation. Instead of forcing a perfect linear logic, I can allow my blog to be a research site that evolves, much like the Ji ju spirit of movement.

 

4.Academic Recommendations for Han Qiu’s Curatorial Direction

1.Noble, Safiya Umoja. Algorithms of Oppression How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. New York: New York University Press, 2018. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ed/detail.action?docID=4834260.

2.Hui, Yuk. “On the Existence of Digital Objects.” ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2012.

3.Classen, Constance. The Museum of the Senses : Experiencing Art and Collections. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781474252454.  

 

Peer Review completed: Saturday, 4th April

 

 

 

 

1.SICP Synthesis: Awareness and Material Agency

This thirteen-week journey has transformed my curatorial focus from the authority of grand institutions to the care for microscopic material tensions. My individual project, Awareness Through Materiality, successfully weaves together the works of Jiang Miao, Suyon Huh, and Guo Puyi. I have realized that a curator is not merely a spatial manager but a facilitator of material agency. Objects are not passive tools of human intentions. They have the potential to change social relations. In the planning of Custom Lane, I guided the audience to break free from the habitual logic of efficiency by showcasing the friction and companionship between these artworks.

2.Ji Ju Reflection: Care as Social Practice

The Ji Ju collective’s exhibition, Our Shell, served as a testing ground for my curatorial ethics. At Summerhall, we proved that curating is an art of flaw and negotiation. Instead of pursuing perfect unity, we use the metaphorical tool of the red line to weave the fragmented migration experience into a temporary archive. As Je Yun Moon notes:

What has to be emphasized here is the fact that the word ‘curatorial’ is not an adjective that describes the mode of operation of professional curators. In other words, the curator is not the first to exist and then the curatorial happens to be its mode of operation. The term ‘curatorial’ no longer dictates a specific role or position. It is a driving word through which we can begin to negotiate with the imperatives of the modern subject machine.

Our collective practice proves that the work of curators is to establish connections for plural voices, even if this connection has friction.

 

3.Curating as Continuous Research

This 13-week blog record itself is my curatorial research laboratory. It records every friction from the germination of the concept to the practical operation. The curator is not only a display of known knowledge, but also a process of producing new knowledge. This idea will serve as the cornerstone of my future career, guiding me to continue to explore how to connect alienated individuals into a caring community through art.

 

Notes:

1.Martinon, Jean-Paul, ed. The Curatorial : A Philosophy of Curating. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2015, 27, Accessed April 21, 2026. ProQuest Ebook Central.

 

1.Material Agency and the Logic of Awareness

In Week 12, my work transitions from gathering observations toward the deliberate planning of my final Curatorial Project report. This stage is not to draw conclusions, but to plan how to implement the research within a professional framework. By finalizing the selection of Jiang Miao, Suyon Huh, and Guo Puyi, I am grounding my curatorial gaze in a concrete study of material . Refining this project requires acknowledging that objects are not passive tools of human intent. 

As Jane Bennett argues:

Not Flower Power, or Black Power, or Girl Power, but Thing-Power: the curious ability of inanimate things toanimate, to act, to produce effects dramatic and subtle.

2. Material Agency and Site Negotiation

In planning the spatial layout for Custom Lane, I have begun to treat matter as an active participant. Jiang Miao’s carvings and Guo Puyi’s modules should not be decorative; they must function as vibrant matter in dialogue with the site’s industrial history. I plan to elaborate in the proposal on how this materiality interferes with the physical rhythm of the audience. Boris Groĭs argues: 

Meanwhile the installation itself has been blessed with art status: installation has become accepted as an art form and increasingly assumes a leading role in contemporary art. So even though the individual images and objects lose their autonomous status, the entire installation gains it back.

This means that my curatoral plan must respect the physical resistance of the material and transform it into a kind of perceptual care.

3.Ethical Integration of Curatorial Components

Finally, I am planning how to integrate the ethical reflections from the Ji Ju collective into my SICP. The curatorial proposal is not only about vision, but also about the management of relationships. I will establish a transparent operation framework, covering artist labor fees, barrier-free design, and collaboration with venue supervisors. I realized that curation is a complex configuration composed of multiple components. This instructs me to ensure that every administrative and technical detail serves the overall ethical commitment of the exhibition before the last week’s summary.

Notes：

1.Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter : A Political Ecology of Things. Durham, [N.C: Duke University Press, 2010, 6.

2.Groĭs, Boris. Art Power. Cambridge, Mass. ; MIT Press, 2008,  53-54.

1.Reflecting on Ji Ju: Flawed Cohesion

After the exhibition at Summerhall, my understanding of the curator’s role shifted from a controller to a mediator. Our Shell is not a perfect white box exhibition. It is full of friction and understanding between different sounds. However, this flawed cohesion gave the exhibition its vitality. I realized that curating is not about erasing differences but about building a temporary community through dialogue. This experience convinced me that the value of curation lies in the process of maintaining these interactions, not just showing the final result.

As scholar Boris Groys argues:

” The artworks presented in these exhibitions/ installations take on the role of documentation of a curatorial project. Yet such curatorial projects are in no way iconophilic; they do not aim to glorify the image’s autonomous value. “

2.Fieldwork at ECA: The Active Spectator

During my visit to the ECA Sculpture Court, the work “Please Leave a Title” caught my attention. The audience was invited to participate in the naming of the work, and this transfer of interactive power changed the nature of the field. It shows me that the field of contemporary exhibition is not a fixed container, but an open system completed by the participation of the audience.  Scott R. argues:

Thus, the properties of a painting are open to many interpretations, but it is hard to see how one interpretation is conclusively true. One must provide a standard with which to adjudicate such interpretations, and I would argue that such standards are themselves open to reevaluation. The basic fact of determinable properties still remains-art always allows for levels of interpretation.

3.Refining Awareness: Towards a Relational Logic

The ECA experience provided fresh perspectives for my project. The sculpture courtyard itself is a heavy space full of historical authority, but the contemporary art intervention breaks this stillness. I realized that to make audiences perceive material resistance, I must introduce a tensional participation rather than relying on static display. This led me to consider how I might use similar non-linear narratives at Custom Lane to pull viewers away from habitual gazing.

 

Note:

1. Groĭs, Boris. Art Power. Cambridge, Mass. ; MIT Press, 2008, 53-54.

2.Stroud, Scott R. “How To Do Things with Art.” The Southern Journal of Philosophy (Oxford, UK) 44, no. 2 (June 2006): 341–64. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2041-6962.2006.tb00105.x.

The culmination of Week 10 saw the opening of Our Shell at Summerhall, Edinburgh, a group exhibition curated by and featuring the Ji Ju Collective. Moving beyond a mere display of objects, the project functioned as a critical inquiry into the hermit crab condition: the constant negotiation of identity, memory, and domesticity within the precarious shells of a migratory life.

1.Collective Action as Method: From Theory to Site

Our exhibition navigated the tension between cultural roots and the temporary shells we inhabit while living abroad. By using red threads to physically connect disparate works, from traditional Qipao to contemporary paintings, we transformed a static gallery room into a living, interconnected organism.

This approach resonates with Miwon Kwon’s discourse on the evolution of site-specificity. She argues that the site has shifted from a fixed physical location to a discursive, mobile network:

The final ‘site’ or frame for art reception and dissemination in this appraisal is no less than the artist–producer and the sometimes transitive and site-less communities of the early 21st century. 

3.Inspiration for My Personal Project

Figure 1. English visual identity and exhibition poster for Our Shell, designed by the Ji Ju Collective, 2026.

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?

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. “

 

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

The Board of Trustees of the Tate Gallery, accessed March22, 2026, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/m/mono-ha.

 

 

1. Negotiation in Collective Collaboration

Notes:

1.Smith, Terry, and Independent Curators International. Thinking Contemporary Curating. New York: Independent Curators International, 2013, 23-24.