From Accessibility Strategy to Curator Ethics

In my curatorial thinking of When Animals Speak the Language of Power, I began to pay attention to “who can enter this public space”. In view of the repulsion caused by the extensive use of black box space, low-light environment, and image devices in the exhibition, I put forward a series of accessibility strategies, such as providing clear wall texts and multilingual descriptions, designing portable printed materials, introducing Braille and audio descriptions, and setting up safe moving lines in the space.

link: Braille & Tactile Tours in Cincinnati Art Museum

link:  Exhibition Beyond the Visual

At the same time, through the text and archival materials, it provides an understanding entrance for the audience who are not familiar with the cultural context of China. These practices respond to the key question in Week 3 curatorial ethics. However, the thinking at this stage still acquiesces that the exhibition structure itself is stable and regards “accessibility” as a supplement attached to it.

link: Week 3 | Audience in curatorial ethics

From accessibility to anti-ableist

In thinking about “anti-ableist”, as Fazeli, Taraneh, and Cannach MacBride put forward in Means Without Ends, “accessibility-centred practice” is not to repair the existing structure but to “learn to live in other ways” through practice. This means that accessibility is not a technical supplement but a method that can reorganise the relationship between experience and society.

Dis_place, an online exhibition of Disability Arts Online, does not focus on a single viewing experience but organises content around multiple perceptual ways. Among them, “Easy Read” text does not simply reduce the difficulty but reorganises the information by simplifying sentence patterns, reducing terms, and combining images so that it can be understood under different cognitive conditions. This process urges curators to rethink what “necessary information” is, and to shift curators from content production to the redistribution of knowledge structure and understanding rights.

link: I need to be more than a lesson you learned, the first exhibition for Disability Arts Online's online gallery, Dis_place

Back to my exhibition plan, I began to adjust the way of curation: on the one hand, I optimised the spatial path; on the other hand, I established multiple access paths through publications, archives, and Easy Read texts so that the audience could participate without relying on a single sense.

Curation is not only about how to be watched, but also about how to be involved in many ways. Anti-ableist practice does not deny visual experience but refuses to take it as the only standard; accessibility should not only make people adapt to the exhibition but also make the exhibition adapt to different ways of existence.

Bibliography

Cincinnati Art Museum. “Accessibility & Audio Tours.” Accessed April 2026. https://www.cincinnatiartmuseum.org/events-programs/accessibility/accessibility-audio.
Fazeli, Taraneh, and Cannach MacBride. “Means Without Ends: Learning How to Live Otherwise Through Access-centered Practice.” In As for Protocols, edited by Re’al Christian, Carin Kuoni, and Eriola Pira, 120–146. Amherst, MA: Amherst College Press, 2025. https://discovered.ed.ac.uk/permalink/44UOE_INST/19p9fo8/cdi_jstor_books_10_3998_mpub_14526504_12.
Henry Moore Foundation. “Beyond the Visual.” Accessed April 2026. https://henry-moore.org/whats-on/beyond-the-visual/.
Disability Arts Online. “I Need to Be More Than a Lesson You Learned.” Dis_place Online Exhibition. Accessed April 2026. https://dis-place.art/i-need-to-be-more-than-a-lesson-you-learned/.

Beyond the exhibition: from archives to publication

Continuing the idea of “curation is translation” in Week 1 and the generation of “public” in Week 11, this week I began to reinterpret “archives” as an integral part of the exhibition structure, rather than an after-the-fact record. In space, using display cases to present text fragments, mythological documents, sketches, and image fragments in the research process is not simply to “supplement information” but to transform the curatorial process itself into visible content. The audience can not only face the finished works, but also see how the works are constructed and rewritten in different theoretical and cultural contexts.

link: Week 1 | Translation of traditional media

link: Week 11 | Reflection on curation: the construction from “audience” to “public”

More importantly, this kind of file display has changed the audience’s viewing path: they no longer just enter from the “finished work” but can stay in the “generation process”. This structure makes the exhibition shift from a single narrative to the superposition of multiple times, including both the historical time of myth, the process time of making works, and the audience’s current viewing time.

link: About the Exhibition History project. MOMA

If exhibitions are the spatial organisation of works, then publications are another “exhibition form” of ideas. They are not affiliated but parallel structures.

Publishing as a Curator: From Space to Circulation

When archives are converted into booklets, postcards or printed materials, exhibitions begin to “overflow” from space. These materials are not only souvenirs but also a kind of “portable exhibition”, so that the audience can continue to touch the narrative and concepts after leaving the exhibition.

This transformation means that curation is no longer limited to one-off space events but becomes a continuous circulation process. As discussed by Louise O’Hare in relation to Nick Thurston, publishing is not simply a tool for explanation but a form of practice that actively produces and structures knowledge. Through publication, the structure, image logic, and cultural discussion of mythical animals in the exhibition have been re-coded and entered a new viewing situation.

For example, the archival practice of the Barbican Art Gallery Archive shows how exhibition history is constantly re-read and reorganised through literature. This kind of “reproduction” makes the exhibition no longer closed but a resource that can be constantly called.

link: Barbican Art Gallery Archive

Therefore, I began to understand the current project as a dual structure: on the one hand, it exists in the space of Summerhall; on the other hand, it also enters a wider cultural circulation through publications, texts, and images.

Bibliography

MoMA Archives. “About the Exhibition History Project.” Museum of Modern Art. Accessed April 2026. https://www.moma.org/research/archives/about-exhibition-history-project.
O’Hare, Louise. “Artists at Work: Nick Thurston.” Afterall, August 2012.
Barbican Art Gallery Archive. “Archive Resources and Exhibition History.” Accessed April 2026. https://www.barbican.org.uk/artgallery/archive.

After Kirsteen’s lecture on “Public and Public Programmes” this week, I began to re-examine the essence of the exhibition. It is not only a spatial structure but also an open platform jointly shaped by the public. As mentioned in the lecture, the public is not the audience that passively receives information but should be regarded as “the aggregate of practice, project, and output”.

I realised that curating should break the hierarchical structure of traditional museums. Lectures and dialogues should not only be accessories of exhibitions but also the core of meaning generation. I decided to transform the public from an “observer” to a constituent advocated by MIMA and actively build an audience through participatory planning. According to the theme of this exhibition, I have planned the following three public projects, aiming at transforming Summerhall into a dynamic social and academic platform.

link: week10｜Starting from “Our Shell”: Practice Record of JIJU Collective Exhibition (mentioned Visibility dilemma: Beyond the structural limitations of propaganda)

link: MIMA ART

link: Rethinking Curatorial Practice and the Role of Museums through Art in Action

The Dialogue between Artists and The Traditional Narrative in the Contemporary Context

Discuss the transformation of traditional myths in contemporary art with artist Eryao, focusing on critical dialogue. For art students, researchers, and contemporary art lovers.

It is recommended to be located in the Red Lecture Theatre in Summerhall.

The Shadow Puppet Workshop of “Light and Shadow Beasts”

Combined with material experiments and performances, participants personally made and operated shadow puppets to experience the vitality of intangible culture. Facing children, families, and interdisciplinary art lovers.

Suitable for the Anatomy Lecture Theatre in Summerhall.

A Reading Seminar on “Myth and Curation”

60 minutes of in-depth discussion based on selected literature, breaking the authoritative narrative. It is for a small professional group (8 people) that is interested in theoretical and cultural research.

It is suitable to be held in the Deans Office in Summerhall.

link: Summerhall's Space hire

Using the social logic in Helmsdale mentioned by Kirsteen for reference, the curator’s subjectivity can be generated on the spot in the dialogue through knowledge exchange in the informal space.

link: Timespan - Helmsdale

By prioritizing public programmes, I aimed to practice what Stefan Grammel describes as an ‘open’ curatorial form that does not ‘attempt to establish a definitive, closed-off, master narrative’. This approach acknowledges that the audience’s experience is ‘generated on the spot’ and is a product of the specific social situation rather than a pre-determined outcome. These projects not only expand the boundaries of the exhibition but also transform the ‘mythic animal’ from a mere visual encounter into a site of deep social connection, where meaning is co-produced through the active participation of diverse publics.”

Bibliography

MIMA. “MIMA Art.” Accessed March 31, 2026. https://mima.art.
REF Impact Case Studies. “Rethinking Curatorial Practice and the Role of Museums through Art in Action.” Accessed March 31, 2026. https://results2021.ref.ac.uk/impact/b92d123f-db16-4955-bee1-b923a45e7f71?page=1.
Timespan. “Helmsdale / Social Practice Context.” Accessed March 31, 2026. https://timespan.org.uk.
Stefan Grammel. “A Series of Acts and Spaces.” In Institution as Medium. Curating as Institutional Critique? Part 1, edited by Dorothee Richter and Rein Wolfs, 33–38. On Curating 8 (2011). https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1QlprJ8Zu7SGn9TJex3Y4uJQ6z8Aq-YUA.
Eryao. Wishing Your Child Becomes a Dragon. 2024. https://youtu.be/MxdBKNgKI3s.

Yande, I am very happy to enjoy your blog.

The exhibition “A Certain Absent” designed in your blog makes the audience unable to see clearly and incompletely through blurred, delayed and fragmented images, thus slowing down the viewing pace and rethinking “how do we see and understand images”.  

Your concept was not like this at very beginning, but was reconstructed through continuous revision, which showed the progressiveness and consistency of your curatorial thinking when you read your blog step by step. 

第2周以“自画像与时间性”为起点，第4周发展为“I–We–They”结构，第7周在 Hito Steyerl 的影响下转向“可见性机制”，最终在第8周《A Certain Absence》中转向对“可见性条件”的整体探讨。

Your blog concept develops clearly and continuously, not fragmented records. There is real critical reflection. 

You have a strong research orientation. 

例如，第1周已引入 Ana Bilbao 关于“微策展”的讨论，以及 Carolee Thea 将双年展视为“实验室”的观点，体现出对策展规模与结构问题的初步思考。这一理论线索在后续持续发展：如第5周通过 Amelia Jones 关于“可见性生产身份”的论述，进一步深化对肖像与身份机制的理解。

Your quotations have become the cornerstone of the evolving curatorial concept, showing the depth of continuous research.

Although the theory has a high degree of participation, its transformation into curatorial practice is still limited. This shows that the theory exists more as a conceptual framework than as a specific curatorial methodology.

例如，第5周对 Jones“可见性”理论的讨论，以及第7周受 Steyerl 启发提出的“延迟可见性”，主要停留在概念层面。在第8周《A Certain Absence》中，虽然提出“模糊、延迟与碎片化”三种图像策略，

However, how these concepts specifically affect art selection, spatial arrangement or audience experience has not been fully explained. Suggestions are further clarified: how the theory guides the selection of works of art, space design and audience path. For example, you can refer to the cases in “Curatorial Activism” or “Curating Research” as discussed in Reilly (2018) and O’Neill and Wilson (2015)about how the theory is transformed into a curatorial strategy, so as to strengthen the operability of the theory.

可执行性问题（重点批评）（这个可以通过后面最终版本再调整！！！）
项目在可执行层面仍有明显不足。尽管第10周已引入 Leith Makers 作为潜在场地，并初步考虑空间与灯光，但关键策展要素仍未充分展开。例如，缺乏对目标观众、展览时长、公共项目及空间布局的系统说明；观众动线与整体展览结构亦未清晰呈现。
因此，该项目目前更接近概念性提案，而非完整的可执行策展方案。
建议补充具体框架，如明确受众定位、展览周期，并提供基础平面布局或观众路径。同时，可引入讲座、工作坊等公共项目，以拓展展览的策展维度。参考如 Tate Modern 或 Serpentine 的策展实践，有助于理解展览与公众项目之间的关系。

Blog keeps a continuous record of the collective process of JIJU collective.

例如第3周提出“hermit crab”隐喻，第9周进一步描述“frictions”与分工过程，体现出对协作经验的观察。

But in the whole, these contents mainly stay at the descriptive level, and the connection between collective curation and your personal curation is weak. Maybe you can find the connection with your own projects in the process of collective curation, whether it is the process of conceptual conception or the process of arranging exhibitions, and see what can be turned into personal curation experience. For example, emphasizing temporality and dependent environment from “hermit crab metaphor”, can this cause you to think about the “visibility condition” in your exhibition “A Certain Absent“? It can be further developed into: how the works “reside” in space and how to exist depending on light, position and viewing angle?

I hope my comments and suggestions can help you.

Bibliography

Reilly, Maura. Curatorial Activism: Towards an Ethics of Curating. London: Thames & Hudson, 2018.

O’Neill, Paul, and Mick Wilson, eds. Curating Research. London: Open Editions, 2015.

1. 做图片
2. 最后HYD完成之后对她blog的toolkit评价一下（再给额外的参考文献）

Curatorial experiment and materialization of identity

“Our Shell” is designed by JIJU Collective, which is not only a curatorial experiment but also a deep reflection on identity, belonging, and spatial adaptability. Using the metaphor of “hermit crab”, the exhibition discusses how overseas individuals construct temporary living spaces.

In this process, I acted as a curator for the exhibition Our Shell while simultaneously serving as the lead designer and a featured artist. I was responsible for the project’s visual identity—designing the posters, booklets, and exhibition signage—as well as the conceptual form and content of the primary installations. As an artist, I contributed my lacquer painting series FINDING MYSELF · LUCKY OCCASIONS COME IN RAPID SUCCESSION, bridging the gap between the exhibition’s curation and its creative execution.” This practice deepened my exploration in week 7, from focusing on “popularity” to excavating “core characteristics of works” and giving priority to cooperating with emerging practitioners. In Our Shell, meaning no longer depends on ready-made fame but is constructed through collaborative experiments.

link: week6| Mythical Animals and Power Structures (the design about the red line)

link: week7｜ From research to situated feasible exhibition structure

Visibility dilemma: Beyond the structural limitations of propaganda

In reflection, the limitation of audience number should not only be attributed to insufficient publicity but should also be regarded as a structural dilemma of visibility. As a student curator as well as one of the JIJU Collective’s members, I operate outside the established framework.

Due to the lack of institutional resources, the audience is mainly limited by personal social networks, and the vast majority of the audience are classmates and friends of JIJU Collective. This proves that visibility is not only determined by the subjective efforts of the curator but also strictly restricted by the resource allocation and platform inclusiveness in the art system.

This lack of visibility directly points to the initiative of an emerging curator. Although I can produce knowledge independently, I have limited rights to speak in mature systems, so it is difficult to decide who will see the exhibition, and it is even more difficult to enter the official institutional system. However, this inequality of power has stimulated productive tensions. As Wilson and O’Neill discussed the “curatorial turn”, JIJU Collective’s project is not on the edge but actively “feeding” the curatorial ecology. Through the lack of experimental energy in mainstream institutions due to inertia, we have produced a new method of exhibition production. Drawing lessons from Alistair Hudson, this practice-based exploration challenges the top-down authoritative logic.

As an emerging curator, I have contradictory conditions. I am not only doing the exhibition but also challenging the knowledge production and circulation system of contemporary curators through practice. Although “Our Shell” is temporary, it proves that in the gap of the mainstream system, new curatorial methods can still continue to grow through experimental collaboration.

Bibliography

JIJU Collective. Our Shell Exhibition Project. Edinburgh, 2026.
Paul O’Neill, and Mick Wilson. “Curatorial Counter-Rhetorics and the Educational Turn.” Journal of Visual Art Practice 9, no. 2 (2010): 177–193.
Alistair Hudson. “Building a User-Generated Museum: A Conversation with Alistair Hudson.” openDemocracy, May 5, 2017. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/building-user-generated-museum-conversation-with-alistair-hudson/.
Roland Barthes. Mythologies. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1970.

Black box as a method

link: The dead don't go until we do, Talbot Rice Gallery

Spatial transformation: from viewing to practice

In my exhibition design, I try to translate this method into a concrete space, rather than simply copying a closed black box environment. I will control the overall light through shading cloth and artificial lighting so that the exhibition hall presents a unified dark tone; black fabric is not only used to shield excess light but also used as a space material to weaken the boundary of the wall and make the visual attention focus on the work itself.

At the same time, the original two glass windows in the space will be preserved as the source of natural light. This treatment makes the exhibition hall between “controllable” and “uncontrollable”: the overall light environment is artificially constructed, but the change of natural light in a day will continue to intervene, forming a temporal atmosphere change. In addition, only partial lighting is necessary for some works so that the space remains hierarchical in the unified darkness.

On the moving line, Kiki Smith’s constellation installation sculpture will be presented at the entrance, combined with wall illustrations, as the visual starting point for the audience to enter the exhibition. Then enter Song’s work. Then, a “research corridor” to display archival materials and publications, making the curatorial research process itself visible. Then, enter the relevant area of Eryao’s work, establish a cultural background through shadow play materials and images, and finally transition to a completely shaded black box space to play its stop-motion animation.

link: week6| Mythical Animals and Power Structures (Eryao and Kiki Smith's works)

link: Week 8｜When Animals Speak the Language of Power (Raeyen Song's works)

Through this series of spatial arrangements, I am no longer concerned with the presentation of a single work but with how to gradually guide the audience into different levels of viewing experience through the design of light, materials, and paths. The black box is therefore not just a closed space, but a curatorial tool that can be dismantled and reorganised.

link: Transdisciplinary Curation in the Performing Arts

Bibliography

Talbot Rice Gallery. “The Dead Don’t Go Until We Do.” Accessed April 1, 2026.  https://www.trg.ed.ac.uk/exhibition/dead-dont-go-until-we-do
Kiki Smith. Constellation. 1996. https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/s2800142_curating-2025-2026sem2/2026/03/03/week6/
Raey Yeen Song. ••••song~xian••••. 2025. https://rae-yen-song.com/projects/song-xian/
Eryao. Wishing Your Child Becomes a Dragon. 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?si=FNpP08jbcY1CG5wh&v=MxdBKNgKI3s&feature=youtu.be

From Three-Tier Structure to Power as a System

In previous curatorial research, I framed the exhibition around the question of how mythical animals operate as a system of power across three levels: family, state, and cosmic cognition. At the state level, represented by Ai Weiwei, myth was situated within historical and political narratives. Drawing from Roland Barthes’s proposition that “myth is not a story, but a system of communication”, myth can be understood as a mechanism through which meaning and ideology are produced across different scales.

link: week6| Mythical Animals and Power Structures

As discussed in the previous week, the decision to move away from Ai Weiwei was based on both practical constraints and a shift toward focusing on the core characteristics of artworks rather than their authorship. Building on this, the project now reconsiders how these characteristics—scale, material force, and symbolic transformation—can be rearticulated through other practices.

link: week7｜ From research to situated feasible exhibition structure

Reframing the Case: Why Raeyen Song

In this context, the work of Raeyen Song offers a critical alternative. Song is a contemporary artist whose practice engages with ecological processes and material transformation, often working with microorganisms, organic matter, and ceramics to construct speculative cosmologies. In his installation, microorganisms in a pond are reimagined as ”gods“, while ceramic forms evoke Daoist “golden bodies”. This shift from monumental representation to micro-scale processes repositions myth as something generated through interaction rather than fixed within historical narratives.

link: https://rae-yen-song.com/projects/☁☁☁☁songxian☁☁☁☁/

From Centralised Power to Distributed Agency

Accordingly, the notion of power is also redefined. Rather than a centralised or monumental structure, power can be understood as relational and distributed. This aligns with Jean-Paul’s argument that curating operates as an ethical practice shaping relations and responsibilities, as well as Maura Reilly’s emphasis on curatorial agency as a means of redistributing visibility and voice. From this perspective, power emerges through processes of selection, arrangement, and interaction rather than being imposed from above.

The relationships between microorganisms, soil, and ceramic material form an evolving ecosystem in which meaning is continuously produced. In this sense, myth is no longer a fixed symbolic form but an ongoing generative system. The transition from Ai Weiwei to Raeyen Song, therefore, does not weaken the political dimension of the exhibition but deepens its understanding of power as something embedded in processes of growth, interdependence, and transformation across human and non-human networks.

Therefore, through this process, I arrive at the title of the exhibition: When Animals Speak the Language of Power.

Bibliography

Raey Yeen Song. ••••song~xian••••. 2025. https://rae-yen-song.com/projects/☁☁☁☁songxian☁☁☁☁/
Jean-Paul Martinon. Curating as Ethics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2020.
Maura Reilly. Curatorial Activism: Towards an Ethics of Curating. London: Thames & Hudson, 2018.

link: Disappearance at Sea

link: The Curators Shaping Contemporary Art: Six Visionaries You Need to Know

This shift has changed my understanding of artist selection. Previously, I prioritised well-known artists, but I now recognise that a more effective approach is to extract the core characteristics of their practices—such as political engagement, dramatic expression, or social empathy. Realising these through works by emerging artists with feasible budgets. In this way, Ai Weiwei can remain as an academic reference within wall texts and research contexts, rather than being physically included. More importantly, this process highlights my role as an emerging curator. By choosing which artists to present, I am not only responding to practical constraints but also contributing to a curatorial ecosystem that supports and circulates new artistic practices.

Bibliography

Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art. “Disappearance at Sea: Mare Nostrum.” Accessed April 1, 2026. https://archive.baltic.art/exhibition/disappearance-at-sea–mare-nostrum-ex233.
Ai Weiwei. Circle of Animals / Zodiac Heads. 2010.https://www.seattleartmuseum.org/whats-on/exhibitions/ai-weiwei-circle-of-animals-zodiac-heads

From Eryao to multi-scale power

link: Week 5 | Shadow puppetry, Images and Dragon Myth

link: Reading week | Understanding Tradition in Dialogue: An Artist Interview

link: Curatorial Pitch

Expand research and management objectives

link: Zodiac Heads, Ai Weiwei

link: Constellation, Kiki Smith

JIJU Collective Curator: Hometown and the Structure of “Shell”

In the group project of JIJU Collective, I led the collective members to determine the theme of our curation and the design of the main work of the curator. The curatorial mode of “image matching”: each person chooses two pictures, one from their original hometown and the other from Edinburgh (as the new “hometown”), and the two need to form emotional or memory connections. For example, I paired the Wukang Building in Shanghai with a similar building in Edinburgh.

In space, we plan to put the images on two opposite walls and connect each pair of images with red lines, hanging above the audience, forming a structure similar to a “shell”, implying the relationship between protection and connection. However, while developing this display strategy, it also prompted me to consider the feasibility of the exhibition, particularly in terms of spatial constraints, installation methods, and audience movement within the space, which is prepared for my next week’s research.

Bibliography

Eryao. Wishing Your Child Becomes a Dragon. 2024. https://youtu.be/MxdBKNgKI3s.
Roland Barthes. Mythologies. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1970.
Ai Weiwei. Circle of Animals / Zodiac Heads. 2010. https://www.seattleartmuseum.org/whats-on/exhibitions/ai-weiwei-circle-of-animals-zodiac-heads.
Kiki Smith. Constellation. 1996. https://www.nelson-atkins.org/art/exhibitions/kiki-smith-constellationJIJU Collective. OUR SHELL Exhibition Project. 2026.

Drawing from Roland Barthes’s proposition that “myth is not a story, but a system of communication,” the exhibition approaches myth not as narrative content, but as an ideological mechanism.

link: Eryao, Wishing Your Child Becomes a Dragon, 58 seconds, Stop-motion animation

At the centre of the curating project is Eryao’s shadow play work, Wishing Your Child Becomes a Dragon

The exhibition does not “present” myths. It restructures how myth is experienced.

Spatial Realisation: Summerhall as Site

link: Summerhall's overview

Academic Framework: Integrating Chinese and Western Theory

To strengthen theoretical grounding, the project integrates both Western critical theory and Chinese mythological scholarship.

Western theoretical framework

• Roland Barthes — myth as ideological system
• Erika Balsom — exhibition as temporal
• Carolee Thea — curatorial mediation

Chinese theoretical framework

• Yuan Ke — systematic construction of Chinese mythological frameworks
• Mao Dun — classification and cultural interpretation of myth
• Ye Shuxian — myth as cultural coding and archetypal structure

This dual framework ensures that Chinese myth is not reduced to a visual motif, cultural interpretation retains local epistemology and subjectivity, and the exhibition avoids purely Western theoretical dominance.

Bibliography

Eryao. Wishing Your Child Becomes a Dragon. 2024. https://youtu.be/MxdBKNgKI3s.

Roland Barthes. Mythologies. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1970.

Carolee Thea. On Curating: Interviews with Ten International Curators. New York: D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, 2009.

Summerhall. “Sciennes Gallery / Exhibition Spaces.” Accessed April 1, 2026. https://www.summerhallarts.co.uk.