From a History of Exhibitions Towards a Future of Exhibition-Making

Contributing Speakers：Alice Sarmiento, Daniel PS Goh, David Morris, Di Liu, Hajnalka Somogyi, Ho Rui An, Ho Tzu Nyen, John Tain, Mia Yu, Roger Nelson, Sen Shen, Yuling Zhong, Zoe Butt, Larys Frogier

Co-organized by Biljana Ciric and Nikita Yingqian Cai
Coordinated by Li Xiaotian

The Guangdong Times Museum is proud to host the third and final Assembly initiated and organized by independent curator Biljana Ciric with the support of several institutions, including St. Paul Street Gallery (2013) and Rockbund Art Museum (2018).

In addition to the Assembly, a Reading Room and an open-call research grant provide additional important layers to the project. Currently on display on the museum’s ground floor, the Reading Room provides a diverse collection of resources available to the public: primary source archival material, critical readers, original catalogues, artist books, and out-of-print locally produced publications. For the Reading Room, artist Cheng Tingting has been invited to rethink the design of the space and to take the notion of gender disparity, present in the Reading Room materials, as the starting point for her own research and the production of new work.

The museum has also organized an open-call grant to support young researchers to initiate research into overlooked histories related to mainland China.

The Assembly and book launch of From History of Exhibitions Towards the Future of Exhibition Making China and Southeast Asia

As the third installment of From a History of Exhibitions Towards a Future of Exhibition-Making, “The Third Assembly: Exhibition-Making Practices in China and Southeast Asia in the 21st Century” reflects on curatorial practices in China and Southeast Asia in the new millennium. Through presentations, lectures, and discussions of curatorial case studies, the workshop speakers investigate a constellation of topics culled from the depths of the crisis in curatorial practices today.

The boundaries between museum exhibitions, art fairs, commercial gallery shows, and art on display in commercial spaces are vanishing while the legitimacy and discursive authority of for-profit art activities continue to colonize an already-tenuous public space. Rampant privatization in the contemporary art world tethers regional art ecosystems to the cycles of global capital, and overwhelmingly determines the orientation and geographic movement of art practitioners today. Biennials continue to pop up everywhere in Asia and around the world, but this highly centralized model is also showing signs of fatigue. Mighty international institutions, combined with local capital, keep expanding into the region, often transplanting exhibition models that have already become stagnant in the Western context. What kind of agency can these local institutions exercise in terms of research, producing locally relevant content, and cultivating their audiences? With exponential growth in both number and scale since the year 2000, exhibitions today are moving towards total spectacularization, thanks to the democratization of technology and social media. Between mere accommodation and stress reaction to the spectacle, is there another way out?

Has the exhibition ever or is it still able to penetrate reality? How are we able to address these changes, to breathe new life into once vital forms of exhibition-making? Why is it urgent to revisit the history of artists’ self-organized exhibitions? How can we revive them today? What does the figure of the artist as curator entail, and what is the future role of the curator? How can we understand biennials from the past and present? What kind of knowledge have they produced?

During the third Assembly, the final publication From History of Exhibitions Towards the Future of Exhibition Making China and Southeast Asia will be launched. This culminating book includes texts from over 20 authors who contributed to research around exhibition histories through this important project. The publication is edited by Biljana Ciric and published by Sternberg press in collaboration with St Paul Street Gallery, Rockbund Art Museum, and Times Museum.  

Publisher: Sternberg Press
Language: English
ISBN-10: 3956794583
ISBN-13: 978-395679458