The Study of
Curatorial Culture
Curatorial Culture
Amid the profound transformations of contemporary social structures and epistemic systems, curating as a form of cultural practice is confronted with unprecedented challenges and opportunities. The expansion of global capitalism, the inherited colonial apparatus, the entangled dynamics of geopolitics and neo-colonialism, along with the climate crisis and intensifying social inequities and vulnerabilities, have all contributed to a deeply rooted anxiety that renders the Western modernist foundations of art institutions and exhibition logics increasingly inadequate in responding to a complex world shaped by cultural, ethnic, and epistemological pluralism. Today, curating is no longer limited to the organization of exhibitions or the display of artworks; rather, it has emerged as a relational and political mode of knowledge production. Its potential lies not only in the presentation of art, but more significantly, in the ongoing reconstruction of publicness and the collective negotiation of coexistence among heterogeneous subjectivities.
This issue, “Curating and Re-public/Re-commons,” aims to elucidate how curatorial practices traverse singular epistemic regimes in order to construct relational, multispecies, and intercultural epistemic ecologies. Engaging in a theoretical dialogue with the aesthetic politics of Jacques Rancière, Nicolas Bourriaud’s relational aesthetics, Grant H. Kester’s dialogical aesthetics, and Claire Bishop’s critique of participatory art, the issue further seeks to incorporate epistemological perspectives from Global South scholars such as Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Walter Mignolo, thereby addressing the neglect of non-Western practices in existing curatorial theory.
This volume explores the epistemological, ethical, and political potential of contemporary curatorial practices in reimagining the notion of “publicness.” Rather than offering a mere semantic redefinition, the concept of the “re-public” articulates a critical inquiry into the politics of public space, collective identity, and the distribution of epistemic power. In an era marked by the increasing concentration of cultural capital and nation-state governance, how can curating enact collective agency and co-construct knowledge, thereby becoming a generative and decolonializing platform for public action? Through theoretical exploration and analyses of curatorial case studies, this compilation of essays seeks to articulate a critical yet praxis-oriented discourse on curating, envisioning possible futures for the coexistence of contemporary art and plural knowledge systems.
I. The Historical and Theoretical Trajectories of Curating and the “Re‑public / Re‑commons”
Since the 1960s, global societies have undergone profound socio-cultural transformations: student movements, feminist and environmental activism have catalyzed critical examinations of cultural institutions and redefined art’s social function. Art has moved from the static museum display into the streets and public arenas, fostering direct, interactive relationships with diverse publics. Consequently, the curatorial role has transformed—from selector and organizer to facilitator of knowledge production and interlocutor in social discourse.
Since the 1970s, the emergence of postcolonialism, feminism, and queer theory has propelled curatorial and artistic practices toward a deeper engagement with issues of race, gender, and class. Art exhibitions have increasingly served as vital platforms for marginalized communities and “others” to articulate their voices and challenge dominant narratives. In this context, the concept of the public has become multilayered, complex, and fluid. No longer conceived as a homogeneous or unified collective, “public/commons” is now understood as a heterogeneous assemblage constituted by differentiated, intersecting, and often conflicting subject positions.
Entering the 1980s and 1990s, discussions surrounding publicness and curatorial practice had grown increasingly nuanced. In 1987, the United Kingdom established the Public Art Forum, marking a significant institutionalization of public art within cultural policy. That same year, Bruno Latour published Science in Action,1 introducing Actor-Network Theory (ANT) which posits that both nature and society are constituted through dynamic networks of heterogeneous human and non-human actors. This theoretical framework disrupts anthropocentric paradigms and offers profound implications for curatorial discourse by reconfiguring the notion of the ‘public/commons’ to encompass interspecies entanglements—foregrounding the relational dynamics among humans, non-human animals, plants, ecosystems, and material objects within a co-constitutive ecological assemblage.2
Since the 1990s, artistic practices have increasingly emphasized social engagement and dialogical processes, leading to a growing dissolution of boundaries between art and non-art. In 1988, Gayatri Spivak’s seminal essay Can the Subaltern Speak?3 challenged the oppressive structures of knowledge and power that silence the voices of the “Other,” providing crucial theoretical resources for subsequent curatorial discourse. In 1994, Suzanne Lacy published Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art, which introduced the concept of “New Genre Public Art.” This framework foregrounds public issues and expands the space for public discourse through audience participation, intervention, and collaboration.4
Building on this foundation, curatorial practice has shifted from traditional exhibition formats toward collective creation and community engagement. Artworks are no longer confined to gallery walls and display cases but extend into communities, schools, factories, and even virtual spaces. The relationship between curators and artists has transformed from an authoritative exhibition curation model to one of co-creation and decentralized collaboration, actively responding to power negotiations and interactions among diverse social stakeholders.
In 2006, Grant Kester, in Conversation Pieces, emphasized art as a vehicle for ethical relationships and social dialogue, opposing purely formalist aesthetic pursuits.5 In 2010, Jacques Rancière further argued in The Emancipated Spectator that spectators should not be regarded as passive recipients but as active agents who reorganize meaning and ethics.6 These theoretical contributions have enriched the multifaceted conception of the “public/commons” in art, progressively blurring the boundaries between participants, audiences, and producers, thus revealing fluid and dynamic relational roles.
From its inception in 2009, the annual Creative Time Summit, organized by the New York-based nonprofit Creative Time, has emerged as a significant global forum for public art and social engagement. The summit convenes artists, curators, sociologists, and activists from around the world to collectively explore how art intervenes in public issues, fosters interdisciplinary collaboration, and advances innovative practices.7
Over the past decade, the theoretical works of Bonaventura de Sousa Santos and Walter D. Mignolo have developed in a complementary manner, driving a contemporary epistemic shift away from Western-centric paradigms and emphasizing epistemic diversity and justice. Santos advocates for a “Southern Epistemology” and “Epistemic Justice,” arguing for the necessity of transcending Western knowledge hegemony by actively embracing the plural knowledges and cultural narratives of marginalized communities.8 This openness fosters epistemic equity and intercultural dialogue, thereby reshaping publicness as a diverse and fluid knowledge-producing commons. Mignolo proposes a “decolonial epistemology,” highlighting the entangled nature of Western modernity and coloniality.9 He stresses that curatorial practice, as a site of decolonial intervention, must dismantle existing power structures and promote the coexistence and dialogue of plural cultural knowledges, advancing a “pluriversal” worldview within a shared world. Together, their theories provide a robust foundation for contemporary curatorial practice, urging curators to critically reflect on their own positionality and epistemic politics, and to cultivate a more inclusive, pluralistic, and politically attuned public sphere.10 This enables the “re-public/re-commons” to become an ever-generative, open, and emancipatory symbiotic space.
Moreover, with the widespread adoption of network technologies and social media, the modes of interaction between curatorial practice and the public have undergone revolutionary transformations. Virtual spaces have emerged as new public realms, wherein curating is no longer confined to physical sites but enables transregional and multispatial public engagement and dialogue through digital platforms. This shift has reconfigured the composition and participation models of the “public/commons,” while simultaneously provoking critical reflections on digital governance, information inequality, and the power of algorithms. Contemporary curating increasingly engages in interdisciplinary collaboration with urban planning, sociology, environmental science, and political science, positioning exhibitions as vital sites for social experimentation and public policy intervention. Such cross-disciplinary cooperation deepens curatorial social engagement and underscores curating’s role as a catalyst for knowledge production and social innovation.
Within the context of globalization, curatorial practice faces the dual challenge of balancing global perspectives with local community needs, thus serving as a crucial arena for Global South and marginalized communities to resist cultural homogenization and colonial legacies. Contemporary curatorship places heightened emphasis on ethical responsibility, particularly when addressing sensitive issues such as cultural representation, Indigenous knowledge, and historical trauma. Curators must demonstrate acute awareness of power structures so as to avoid perpetuating colonial violence, striving instead to foster genuine co-creation and equitable dialogue. The historical and theoretical trajectories outlined above provide essential insights for understanding the relationship between curating and the “re-public/re-commons.”
II. Epistemic Ecologies in a Global Perspective
Within the global contemporary art field, the museum continues to occupy a central position. These spaces are often structured around the triangular relationship among artists, artworks, and audiences, thereby producing an aesthetic logic grounded in “gaze” and “representation.” The result is an abstract spatiality detached from everyday experience and specific sociocultural contexts. Whether manifested as the purified environment of the “white cube,” the enclosed theatricality of the “black box,” or the liminal “gray zone” in between, the museum frequently positions art as a bearer of universal truths and cross-cultural validity, emphasizing canonical works by artists deemed to be of exceptional value.
Yet, such exhibition models—rooted in assumptions of epistemic universality—are increasingly subject to critique and contestation from multicultural and decolonial perspectives. These critiques question not only the hegemonic status of Western aesthetic paradigms, but also the structural exclusions they perpetuate within the global art system.
1 Bruno Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987).
2 See Noortje Marres,“Issues Spark a Public into Being: A Key but Often Forgotten Point of the Lippmann-Dewey Debate,” in Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy, ed. Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), 208–217.
3 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak,“Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 271–313.
4 Suzanne Lacy, Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art (Seattle: Bay Press, 1994).
5 Grant Kester, Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006).
6 Jacques Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator, trans. Gregory Elliott (London: Verso, 2010).
7 Creative Time,“Creative Time Summit,” accessed June 9, 2025, https://creativetime.org/projects/creative-time-summit.
8 Bonaventura de Sousa Santos, Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide (London: Routledge, 2014).
9 Walter D. Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011).
10 ibid, 176-331.
In reality, vast regions across the globe still lack access to basic cultural infrastructures such as art museums. The cosmologies and epistemologies of these areas have long been marginalized or suppressed by dominant Euro-American knowledge systems. In response to this ongoing disparity, contemporary art practitioners are called to critically interrogate the aesthetic regime of “gaze and representation,” challenging its reliance on singular visual experience and expanding toward multisensory modes of perception. This involves not only resisting epistemic hegemony but also striving to construct a pluralistic and mutually nourishing ecology of knowledge.
Artistic creation is deeply embedded in specific localities. Whether knowledge arises from inner consciousness or external reality, its production is inseparable from the embodied practices of perception, reasoning, memory, and witnessing rooted in everyday life. As a discipline, aesthetics must be grounded in concrete cultural and lived contexts—ranging from the theoretical foundations of artistic practice and the sensory appreciation of nature and artworks, to the affective dimensions that shape experience and generate knowledge—thus reaffirming its indispensable role.
Contemporary theorists such as Nicolas Bourriaud, Grant H. Kester, Claire Bishop, and Jacques Rancière have critically interrogated and transcended the traditional aesthetic paradigm of “gaze and representation,” reconceptualizing art as a site of communication, heterotopia, and participatory co-creation.11 In this framework, art is no longer confined to a static, one-directional act of viewing but is instead understood as a perceptual dynamic, a continually unfolding space of intersubjective encounters. While these theoretical contributions have deepened the understanding of the public dimensions of art, they often fail to account for the specificities of local cultural contexts. As Bonaventura de Sousa Santos contends, the interlocking structures of capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy have produced systemic epistemic oppression and hegemonic knowledge regimes. Theories emerging from the Global South advocate for epistemological pluralism and call for a recognition of diverse cultural values—especially the rights and voices of communities historically marginalized in economic and political terms.
The scope of aesthetics has thus been redefined—moving beyond the creation and contemplation of artworks toward an expanded field of sensory knowledge and experiential diversity. This perspective resonates with the insights of Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Maria Paula Meneses, who explore the relationships among taste, smell, and place-based epistemologies, thereby opening new horizons for an epistemology of art.12 Place, in this view, is not only a vessel of collective memory but also a site of resistance against the commodifying tendencies of global capitalism. This epistemological politics mirrors the agency and social responsibility of contemporary art, echoing Hannah Arendt’s philosophical reflections on “action” and the capacity for new beginnings.13
In today’s context, the resistance against epistemological monocultures and the promotion of a plural, dynamic epistemic ecology have become shared imperatives among artists and theorists striving for a more just society. This is not merely a theoretical turn but a central concern in contemporary artistic and curatorial practice. In Epistemologies of the South, Santos argues that the modern Western knowledge system operates through an intertwined power structure of colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy, systematically marginalizing the knowledge, ecological practices, and cultural expressions of the Global South.14 Walter D. Mignolo further argues that decolonial theory is not simply a form of critique but a practice—one that integrates knowledge production with social movements, empowering marginalized communities to reclaim epistemic agency and reconfigure existing hierarchies of authority and distribution.15 Both frameworks offer profound insights for curatorial practice today.
If curating is understood as a site of knowledge production and sensory politics, the curator is no longer merely an arranger of objects but a mediator, translator, and co-constructor of multiple epistemologies. The curatorial space itself transforms from a unidirectional display zone into a “borderland” of epistemological encounter, conflict, and reconfiguration. This shift implies that curation concerns not only the content of exhibitions but also the modalities of presentation, the publics addressed, and the collective processes of meaning-making.
11 Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics (Dijon: Les presses du réel, 1998); Grant H. Kester, Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004); Claire Bishop, Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (London: Verso, 2012); Jacques Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator, trans. Gregory Elliott (London: Verso, 2009).
12 Bonaventura de Sousa Santos and Maria Paula Meneses, eds., Knowledges Born in the Struggle: Constructing the Epistemologies of the Global South (New York: Routledge, 2020).
13 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 175–200.
14 Bonaventura de Sousa Santos, Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2014), 1–17.
15 Walter D. Mignolo and Catherine E. Walsh, On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis (Durham: Duke University Press, 2018), 17–22.
The notion of an epistemic ecology is a response to globalization, cultural diversity, and ecological crisis. It rejects the dominance of a singular epistemic center and instead advocates for transdisciplinary, intercultural dialogue and collaboration. In curatorial practice, this represents an open-ended, dynamic, and ongoing co-creation of knowledge that, through interaction and negotiation among diverse participants, reflects the complexity and fluidity of public concerns.
III. Co-cultivating Public/Commons through Strategies of Decentering and Relational Networks
The fifteenth edition of documenta, documenta fifteen (2022), curated by the Indonesian art collective ruangrupa, is widely regarded as a seminal milestone in the practice of decentralized curatorship. Central to the exhibition was the concept of lumbung—an Indonesian term meaning “shared rice barn”—which emphasized resource sharing, collective governance, and a decentralized organizational model aimed at enacting a community-centered, translocal curatorial ethic. Within this framework, art ceased to be regarded merely as object display and instead was transformed into a dynamic process of collective learning and living. The role of the curator shifted from that of interpreter to facilitator of collaborative platforms, underscoring an ethics of co-learning, co-habitation, and co-creation, thereby realizing the curatorial potential for constructing a “re-public/re-commons.”
Nevertheless, documenta fifteen was not without controversy. During the exhibition, certain artworks by participating collectives were accused of antisemitism by mainstream German media and political figures, sparking intense political and public backlash. This episode exposed profound tensions inherent in contemporary curatorial practice on the global stage—where challenging existing cultural hegemonies through pluralistic perspectives and decentralizing principles inevitably renders curatorial spaces battlegrounds for ideological and power struggles. The controversy thus highlighted that curating involves not only the selection of exhibition content but also the reconstruction of public discourse, political values, and epistemic justice.
Consequently, documenta fifteen represents not only an experimental moment in curatorial history but also a vigorous dialogue and intervention regarding the very notion of “public/commons.” It underscores how contemporary curators must rethink the exhibition space as a site of knowledge co-production and public becoming amid entangled cultural and political forces. As a politically charged curatorial methodology, lumbung offers crucial insights for reimagining the “re-public”—not merely concerning who is granted voice, but also who may co-inhabit, co-construct, and collaboratively participate in the future production of knowledge and social imaginaries, along with the complex political negotiations and ethical considerations such participation entails.
Similarly, the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale, titled The Laboratory of the Future and curated by Ghanaian-Scottish architect and novelist Lesley Lokko, foregrounded perspectives from the lobal South. Lokko emphasized that Africa is no longer a passive object awaiting salvation, but a subject of knowledge characterized by agency, innovation, and multiplicity. She asserted that knowledge is rooted in land, body, memory, and practices of symbiosis.
These curatorial practices from the Global South signal a broader transformation: curating is increasingly emerging as a Polyphonic Site of Knowledge Production, whose primary task is not to construct a singular universal truth, but to enact a polyphony of knowledges. Through exhibitions, dialogue, collaboration, and action, curating challenges the epistemic foundations of centralism, capitalism, and modernism, and works to build ethical spaces that embrace difference and foster co-existence. As such, re-public/re-commons must not be understood as the recovery of an idealized public sphere, but as an ongoing process of reflection and practice—fragmentary, open-ended, and marked by rupture. Precisely because of these qualities, curating can serve as a point of ethical responsibility and political imagination.
In my personal curatorial practice, “place” has never merely served as a backdrop for exhibition; rather, it constitutes both the point of departure and culmination for knowledge production and political praxis. This perspective was concretely realized in the 2015-initiated project Curating Topography Trilogy: Part One – Topography of Mirror Cities. Through topographic research, combined with archival collection, artistic interventions, and community writing, the project foregrounded the notion that knowledge emerges not solely from institutional centers or academic domains, but is deeply rooted in landscapes, languages, embodied memories, as well as local traditions and future imaginaries. Spanning cities such as Dhaka, Jakarta, Bangkok, Taipei, and Phnom Penh, the initiative collaborated with marginalized communities, artists, and cultural historians to forge a model of knowledge co-production that originates from the margins. Such curatorial practice transcends mere knowledge representation; it redefines who holds the right to speak, who writes history, and who participates in public discourse.
Topography of Mirror Cities embodies an epistemic stance that resists supplanting dominant knowledge systems with a singular truth, instead revealing and fostering diverse local knowledges and experiences—including the linguistic and corporeal residues of colonialism and transnational migratory experiences. Here, “place” is no longer a passive recipient of global curatorial discourses but an active site of generation; local communities are not mere participants but co-authors and co-curators. This topographical curatorial strategy resonates with Hannah Arendt’s notion of the “political character of action,” wherein new practices emerge in the public realm through speech and actions.16 It constitutes a translocal, translingual “topographic alliance” that enacts the co-constitution of the re-public/commons through decentered and networked strategies—a public form that is heterogeneous, unstable, yet rich with relational possibilities.
Starting from “place,” this curatorial approach rejects the confinement of knowledge production within central institutions or monolithic authoritative discourses. Instead, it manifests a polyphonic, pluralistic, heterogeneous, and contextualized publicness through decentralized networks, enabling marginalized and silenced knowledges to re-enter public discourse. This publicness no longer conforms to the stable, rational, and transparent “public sphere” presumed by Western Enlightenment traditions. Rather, it is a multi-sourced, multidirectional, and relational re-public/commons—ephemeral, fragile, and tension-filled, yet precisely because of this, it preserves space for new connections and emergent subjectivities. Curating ceases to be mere exhibition arrangement and audience navigation; it becomes a negotiated platform of knowledge relations, a nodal network where diverse cultures, experiences, historical traumas, and geographies intersect. These nodes remain autonomous yet are linked and resonant through curatorial strategies, constituting a continuously evolving public space and new forms of community.
This networked re-public/commons embodies a politically engaged and poetically envisioned response by contemporary curatorial practices to global epistemic inequalities, unveiling new horizons for the evolution of curatorial methodologies.
IV. Reconstructing the Public/Commons
In the face of the multifaceted challenges posed by global environmental crises, technological transformations, and social inequalities, contemporary curating urgently requires a departure from insular art systems toward practices of symbiosis that transcend disciplinary, species, and cultural boundaries. Curating is not merely exhibition production but constitutes an ethical intervention and political praxis centered on the construction of an “epistemic ecosystem”—one that emphasizes the interaction and collaboration among humans and nature, science and art, the local and the global. Curators thus bear new responsibilities: to honor plural knowledge systems, to foster dialogue among heterogeneous cultures and life forms, and to avoid the reproduction of oppressive structures. Curating should also be understood as a catalyst for empathy and resonance, providing society with more inclusive, just, and sustainable blueprints for public life and coexistence among heterogeneous subjectivities.
16 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), esp. the chapter on “Action.”
The publicness of curating is not a compensatory mechanism within institutional configurations but a practice of open conditions and dialectical processes. The notion of the re-public/re-commons implies that publicness is not a given state but must be continuously reconstructed through negotiation, translation, and action. This concept responds to Bruno Latour’s propositions on “making things public” and “reassembling the social”: publics do not emerge naturally but are the ongoing products of diverse actors.17 Curating functions as the organizer and translator of this heterogeneous network, gathering divergent voices, mediating conflicting knowledges, and enacting an ethics of dialogue—thus opening up possibilities for the redistribution of sensibilities and epistemic power.
In the contemporary context, curatorial practice can no longer be confined to the realm of artistic display; rather, it must be understood as a politically charged cultural praxis, one that assumes the multifaceted task of organizing public discourse, translating heterogeneous knowledges, and constructing forms of co-existence. Confronted with the intertwined challenges of global political instability and ecological crisis, the curator is increasingly called upon to act as a weaver of cultural ecologies—moving beyond the exhibition format to take on the roles of coordinator and translator within dynamic epistemic networks. This involves convening diverse voices, mediating incommensurate or conflicting knowledge systems, and enacting an ethics of dialogue.
In this light, curating emerges as a critical site for the redistribution of the sensible and the renegotiation of epistemic authority, opening up new possibilities for shaping what might be called the “re-public/re-commons”—a public sphere not premised on uniformity or consensus, but continuously constituted through the process of becoming-with others. Such a public is inherently plural, relational, and in flux, grounded in an ethics of empathy, coexistence, and openness. Curating, then, becomes a platform through which divergent experiences and forms of knowledge intersect and resonate, fostering new modes of connection and transformative relationality.
This issue, Curating and the Re-Public/Re-Commons, brings together three essays—Berto Tukan’s “In the Process of Becoming,” Geng Yi-wei’s “Curating Publicness,” and Shamim Ahmed Chowdhury’s “Between Light and Poetic Silence.” Each contribution, shaped by distinct cultural contexts and geopolitical positions, explores how curating can serve as a practice that reclaims publicness and opens spaces for the redistribution of the sensible and dialogical engagement.
“In the Process of Becoming: Reflections from The Innards of Jakarta Biennale 2024” examines how the relationship between curating and the public took on new forms at JB 2024. Conceived as a celebration of artistic autonomy and local cultures, the Jakarta Biennale was not merely an exhibition but a public practice grounded in the communal ethos of lumbung. At its core, the curatorial process was organized around the “Jakarta Assembly,” which convened multiple art collectives to engage in a decentralized, collaborative mode of curating informed by the spirit of gotong royong (mutual aid). This “meta-collective” model emphasized flexibility, equity, and pluralistic dialogue, challenging conventional notions of curatorial authority and repositioning the public as active participants and co-creators of the curatorial process.
Amid conditions of institutional fragility and limited resources, such collective action not only sustained artistic autonomy but also forged a new paradigm for curatorial engagement with the public sphere. It illuminated the diverse configurations of public/commons within contemporary art ecologies and the potential for constructing consensus through relational and collaborative processes.
“Curating Publicness: The 2024 Tainan Arts Festival as a Case Study” examines the public dimension of curatorial practice in the field of performing arts, using the 2024 Tainan Arts Festival as its focal point. The essay argues that curating should adopt an inductive approach—drawing themes from the nuances and contingencies of the artistic encounter—rather than imposing prefigured conceptual frameworks. Emphasizing the importance of play as a generative space for creativity, the author draws inspiration from Bertolt Brecht’s rehearsal methods to advocate for curatorial practices grounded in reflective judgment and imaginative openness, capable of embracing unpredictability and multiplicity.
Curating is compared metaphorically to producing a music album, where the theme evolves alongside the creative process, and constraints themselves become sources of invention. Ultimately, the essay underscores the arts festival as a public platform, where publicness is enacted through four mechanisms of engagement: dialogue across diverse issues, active intervention, public forums, free assembly, and independent thinking. These strategies foster deeper public deliberation and the co-formation of shared understanding.
“Between Light and Poetic Silence” centers on the Bangladeshi art project Shohornama, which utilizes visual arts, installation, and performance to reconstruct the mnemonic landscapes of marginalized spaces in the face of urbanization and historical erasure. Through curatorial strategies that foreground the body as a medium of memory and resistance, the project responds to the traumas of displacement and environmental transformation. Its central installation, The Big Tent, functions not only as a shelter but as a mobile theater for performative gestures and collective remembrance, underscoring the fragility and transience of “home.”
Shohornama emerges as a “poetic silence” that narrates dispossessed experiences through quiet acts, illuminating hope within the faint light of artistic expression. Through projects such as The Big Tent, Neer (Home) Pakghor (Community Kitchen) and embodied performance, the curatorial approach invokes memory, nurtures healing, and sustains life both physically and spiritually. From this perspective, the “re-public/re-commons” is envisioned as a polyvocal, fluid, and decentralized commons—a space for dialogical and collaborative re-imagination that traverses disciplines and identities, resists hegemonic narratives, and rethinks home and belonging in relation to body, memory, and collective imagination.
Together, these case studies demonstrate that the essence of curating lies not in reproducing the internal logics of the art world, but in convening, connecting, and mobilizing marginalized voices and latent possibilities—thus enabling a reconstitution of the public and the commons.
17 Latour, Bruno and Peter Weibel (eds.). Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005, 14-43; Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, 7-8, 27-42, 114-120.
1 Bruno Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987).
2 See Noortje Marres,“Issues Spark a Public into Being: A Key but Often Forgotten Point of the Lippmann-Dewey Debate,” in Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy, ed. Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), 208–217.
3 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak,“Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 271–313.
4 Suzanne Lacy, Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art (Seattle: Bay Press, 1994).
5 Grant Kester, Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006).
6 Jacques Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator, trans. Gregory Elliott (London: Verso, 2010).
7 Creative Time,“Creative Time Summit,” accessed June 9, 2025, https://creativetime.org/projects/creative-time-summit.
8 Bonaventura de Sousa Santos, Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide (London: Routledge, 2014).
9 Walter D. Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011).
10 ibid, 176-331.
11 Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics (Dijon: Les presses du réel, 1998); Grant H. Kester, Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004); Claire Bishop, Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (London: Verso, 2012); Jacques Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator, trans. Gregory Elliott (London: Verso, 2009).
12 Bonaventura de Sousa Santos and Maria Paula Meneses, eds., Knowledges Born in the Struggle: Constructing the Epistemologies of the Global South (New York: Routledge, 2020).
13 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 175–200.
14 Bonaventura de Sousa Santos, Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2014), 1–17.
15 Walter D. Mignolo and Catherine E. Walsh, On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis (Durham: Duke University Press, 2018), 17–22.
16 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), esp. the chapter on “Action.”
17 Latour, Bruno and Peter Weibel (eds.). Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005, 14-43; Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, 7-8, 27-42, 114-120.
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Sandy Hsiu-chih Lo is an independent curator whose main research areas include urban studies, philosophical construction of space, gender politics, contemporaneity of indigenous art, and situated knowledge. Her current program focuses on curating as a method of social practice, spatial practice, and critical thinking. Curating topography, a curatorial practice method that she has actively used in recent years, uses relative and relational spatial concepts to bring to light different cultural concepts such as myths, legends, history, memories, morals, ethics, desires and rights embedded in the pluralistic dialectic concept of place in order to strengthen political and ethical transformation through the contrast, confrontation, overlap, and juxtaposition in the becoming of place.
Her major curatorial projects include “Di Hwa Sewage Treatment Plant Art Installation: A New Cosmopolitan World”, ”Street Theatre” (awarded as the best curating work and outstanding project by Ministry of Culture, Taipei, 2004-2005), “Pop Pill” (“Shanghai Cool”, Taiwan Section, Doland Museum, Shanghai, 2005), “Border-crossing, A Tale of Two Cities” (Taipei, Shanghai, 2005-2006), “Exorcising Exoticism”(Taipei, 2006), “Poetic Borderline” (“Borderliner”, Taiwan Section, Festival of Contemporary Art Varna, Bulgaria, 2007). She is the co-curator of the related project of 9th Shanghai Biennale “Zhongshan Park Project”(the related project of 9th Shanghai Biennale, Taiwan, China, 2012-2013), “A Revelation from Ponso no Tao”(Orchid Island, Taiwan, 2014), “Taitung Ruin Academy”(Taitung, Taiwan, 2014), “Topography of Mirror Cities” (Taipei, Dhaka, Bangkok, Jakarta, Phnom Penh and Kuala Lumpur, 2015-2021), “2018 Kuandu Biennale Seven Questions for Asia” (2018-2019), “2019 Green Island Human Rights Art Festival Visiting No.15 Liumagou: Memory, Place and Narrative” and “2020 Green Island Human Rights Art Festival If on the Margin, Draw a Coordinate.”
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