This curatorial project explores how traditional art can operate within contemporary exhibition frameworks—not as preserved heritage, but as an active narrative structure.
The theoretical foundation of this project draws from Roland Barthes’s argument in Mythologies that: Myth is not a story, but a system of communication.
If myth is a structure that naturalises ideology, then curating myth is not about retelling narratives—it is about exposing the mechanisms through which meaning becomes “normal”.
From Dragon as Symbol to Dragon as Structure
The project centres on Eryao’s shadow play work Wishing Your Child Becomes a Dragon.
Traditionally, the dragon is understood as a cultural symbol of fortune and power. However, following Barthes’ concept of second-order signification, the dragon here is approached not as folklore imagery but as an ideological structure. The work topic does more than express parental hope. It encodes intergenerational pressure, social mobility anxiety, as well as identity shaped through expectation.
In this exhibition, the dragon becomes a mechanism that naturalises these structures across time.
Curating as Translation
Drawing on Carolee Thea’s understanding of the curator as mediator and extending toward cultural translation theory, this project treats exhibition-making as a process of re-articulation rather than preservation.
Tradition is not displayed as authenticity. It is relocated into a new discursive and perceptual framework.
Temporal Structure and the Moving Image
Shadow play is inherently temporal—it unfolds through projection, repetition, and duration.
Engaging with moving image exhibition theory, particularly the writings of Erika Balsom, this project imagines the exhibition space as a temporal architecture rather than a static display. Audiences enter a looping projection at different moments. There is no fixed beginning. The dragon emerges gradually through flickering light and shadow. Time in this exhibition is not only media duration. It is cultural persistence—the long repetition of expectation across generations.
Ethical Scale
If myth influences how we understand the world, and exhibitions influence how we understand myth, then curating is never neutral.
Instead of celebrating the dragon as cultural heritage, this exhibition questions how such narratives shape identity and expectation in contemporary society.
The project, therefore, operates not as cultural nostalgia but as a speculative curatorial method testing how traditional narrative forms continue to organise contemporary life.
