The Symbiosis of Curating and Creating: An Artist-Curator Curatorial Practice

Text by Chia-Hui CHIANG

Freeze, curated by Damien HIRST in 1988, was staged at a warehouse in the southeastern corner of London, featuring 16 artists, many of whom were HIRST’s peers from Goldsmiths. The exhibition was a considerable success, kicking off the rise of present-day YBAs (Young British Artists).The London art scene of the 1990s saw the rise of exhibitions curated by the artists themselves, mostly in alternative venues. This became a different form of cultural production outside the galleries and institutions, and “curating” was gradually seen as an act and manner of creating art. An increasing number of exhibitions helmed by artist-curators can be seen in recent years, as German artist Christian Jankowski curated Manifesta 11 and New York-based DIS the Berlin Biennial in 2016, while chief curator Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro invited seven artists from different backgrounds to join him at the 33rd São Paulo Bienal in 2018, developing a kind of collective curating. In present days, the curators are finding ways to experience art, create revolutionary ideas, or experimenting different forms of exhibition, seeking to make art connected to the right now. When the artist doubles as the curator, he is engaged in an even more complex relationship and diverse dialogue with the other participating artists due to the role he plays and his idea and practice of art. Simultaneously, the outlook and semantics of curating keep on expanding and evolving in the process.

Chun-Yi CHANG, currently teaching at the Department of Fine Arts, National Taiwan University of Arts, is an artist herself. Her works were seen in galleries, museums, and art centers of Paris, New York, and Beijing when she studied in France.In the last couple of years, the exhibitions she curated, Air Plant: Performance Ability within Contemporary Arts and Daily+, the 2nd Greater Taipei Biennial of Contemporary Art, took place not only in NTUA’s Yo-Chang Art Museum but also in the unconventional venues of the neighboring Nine Single Rooms Art Space and Northern Campus. The symbiotic curating mechanism adopted by CHANG in these two exhibitions has paved a unique co-creative and active form of cultural production between the artists and the curator. This article seeks to explore, via Chang’s curating practice in the Daily+ event, the possible caretaking (the Latin etymology curare of the term “curator” also has that meaning) role played by the artist-curator in the contemporary institution (the museum) and mechanism (the biennial).

A similar curating concept was manifested in CHANG’s past exhibitions, such as the Work/Medium experiment of 2003 at the Open Contemporary Art Center. Art criticHai-Ming HUANG said of that exhibition in the March 2003 issue of Artist Magazine: “Rather than the preparation phase before the completion of the art, this kind of working order is art itself. That is, the purpose of curating is to represent the never-ending, never-fixed state of work/medium.”

In this adventurous exhibition, CHANG asked the artists (whom she called performers) create their pieces on site according to some basic rules: the artists took their place inside the venue in a certain order, and they could choose whether to engage in a dialogue or interaction with the preexisting works based on how the space is used at the moment. As a result, the exhibition came into being as a work in progress, freely and arbitrarily. It was a process of practice where a piece of art was represented in an unfixed state, and such a process unfurled itself stimulated by the interaction among the artists (performers) and that between them and the space. And this model has since become the underlying curating methodology for Air Plant and Daily+.

“As an artist, I’m interested in questions on the level of artistic practice. As a curator, I keep thinking and imagining what the locale for that kind of practice can be like in 30 to 50 years.” Her curating methodology also starts from the creative subject of art, putting herself in the artists’ shoes to really know what it is feasible for the exhibition.Meanwhile, this kind of dual identity has enabled to try to do something different based on her own experience as an artist in terms of making art and participating in exhibitions. “When I was in an exhibition overseas, I wouldn’t know what other artists were doing or putting on display right until the opening ceremony, and that’s usually when I finally realized what the entire exhibition I was a part of really looked like. Very often we decided what to put on display based on very limited clues let on by the curator, and that’s how I realized ‘making art’ and ‘exhibition’ could be two very different things. Therefore, when I returned to Taiwan and became a curator myself, I’ve always considered the possibility of making these two things into one, or even if it’s possible to make ‘participating in an exhibition’ an opportunity for opening up new potential for making art.” In the Daily+ exhibition, we finally see this idea put into practice from the preliminary planning and execution to final presentation.

First off, under the framework of the Greater Taipei Biennial of Contemporary Art, CHANG’s main institutional concern as a curator lies in how the exhibition enlivens the city and builds more refined connection to the locale, including the memories of the residents, land, space, and even art institutions in greater Taipei, as well as if the exhibition can function beyond the scope of cultural and historical documentation, study, and research for the Nine Single Rooms Art Space and the Northern Campus.At the same time, she is also thinking from the standpoint of a creative subject: the biennial artists come from not only Taiwan but also Austria, France, Japan, Luxembourg, and the United States, so CHANG sought to help them get to know the exhibition venues in a freer yet more intimate way, so as to stimulate more creative and heartfelt imagination. Instead of merely providing basic data such as site photos and floor plans, CHANG wished to provide the artists with in-depth understanding into the spatial image and historical background of the exhibition venues.

Therefore, literature has become a bridge connecting reality and imagination. The first piece of work created for Daily+ is Wall Climber, written by the first participating artist, celebrated Taiwan novelist Yi-Chin LO. Through his writing and narrative, he became the starter for Daily+. CHANG took LO on a tour around the 1960s houses outside the campus, through the renovated buildings deep in the valleys, and inside the old faculty dormitories. In addition to the cultural background of the neighborhood, she also described to the novelist what were there in the Air Plant expo and the last edition of the biennial, De-coincidence—Where do art and existence come from?, some of which made it into LO’s writing, resulting in a text integrating fiction into real locales. Right as Wall Climber was finished, CHANG sent it to the participating artists, in the hope that they could get to know the environment and background for their pieces. Translating the time and space of these venues into the novel was not meant to serve as a guide or top-down instruction. Instead, it provided the soil or catalyst share by all the creators. “It is my hope that this novel, written in conjunction with the exhibition venues, could create some kind of invisible linkage among the exhibits, gradually unfolding and revealing itself as a network between the text, art, and venues.”

After sending out Wall Climber, CHANG allowed the artist enough time to plan their projects. Meanwhile, she started preliminary zoning and deployment according to the characteristics and qualities of the three venues, enabling the artists to develop their projects in order and in batches. She even visited those artists in Europe who could not come in person to get an actual feel of the venue, and engaged in one-on-one discussion with them.All the participating artists were able to choose whether or not to create the exhibition space for their pieces. Also, they were able to know what the other artists’ ideas and proposals, and they were allowed to make adjustments, alterations, and even last-minute additions accordingly. During the whole process, they could preview the complete look of the exhibition as it changed and morphed. “The process of development was similar to a poker game, where the players play their hands based on how other players play theirs. What we aimed for was for the artists to engage of their volition in the exhibition,” CHANG said, adding that this was close to what she imagined as the “symbiosis between participating and creating,” and that is why the Daily+ exhibits were able form closely-knit intertextuality with the fictional text, space, and other exhibits. According to CHANG, some artists told her that during the process of discussion, dialogue, and completing the project, a different dimension of possible development had opened up for their art and creativity. As parts of the necessary process of curating, the communication and negotiation with the artists are highly valued by CHANG, who approaches the formation of an exhibition from the perspective of making art, and that is why she could rise above the formulaic design of exhibitions based on a certain discursive structure. We should note that the theme Daily+ was not meant as a question to be answered by the artists. Rather, it was a keyword decided on only after the artists revealed their projects and it was made in line with the qualities of their pieces and the overview of the exhibition.

The way CHANG pictures it, Daily+ is “a piece of blank paper with a folded crease.” Using the blank paper as a metaphor, Daily+ is the slightly folded-up space, shadow, and change of direction when the crease appears. This is where all the inherent possibilities come into being, where the slightest of differences opens up an entirely disparate dimension, enabling the rediscovery of the daily from the miniature-scale breach made by art on this plane.Therefore, set against the fluid and uncertain openness of Daily+, the curator’s role in the production of exhibition is largely about continuously contemplating how the exhibition and exhibits intervene and gets represented in the three venues, how the relationship between the exhibits and the space brings out the viewer’s physical perception and experience, and how to communicate with the artists to finish their projects. She compared the role of a curator to the sugar cube in a cup of cappuccino, and the viewer the drinker. When he/she drinks the coffee, he/she doesn’t sense the existence of the sugar cube, but all its flavor has gradually dissolves in that cup. That is to say, the viewer gets what he/she experiences about the work based on his/her own sensory system and experience, so it’s not necessary to seek out and superimpose some pre-existing taste or concept. As a curator, she had to consider all the realistic aspects of the exhibition: “During the planning and execution of the exhibition, I couldn’t help but think of my own experience creating a watercolor painting. It requires immaculate management of time, waiting patiently for the water and paint to settle down while at other times drawing it out slowly but layering it on quickly. For instance, in the crucial moment when the canvas is half moist, half dry, you need to make the most precise judgment on the spot, adding, extracting, adjusting. It takes time, just like the brewing of creative ideas, circulation of energy, and dialogue with the work. As the projects present themselves before your eyes and possible scenario of the exhibition unfurl itself in your head, you need to use time wisely and decide how to paint the picture under the existing structure.” She acknowledged the excitement and difficulty of this very curating experience, but her account thereof, which is true of a creative artist’s attitude, is also a fitting description of a different curating practice in contemporary times. (Translated by Yi-Hsuan CHEN)