About

Curatography is an outgrowth of the achievement of various grants from Taiwan’s National Culture and Arts Foundation (NCAF) in recent decades. In 2018, the NCAF established ARTWAVE – Taiwan International Arts Network platform, which works to integrate Taiwan’s key arts initiatives, including the Taiwan Pavilions Initiative, Curators’ Intensive Taipei (CIT) International Conference, Youth Curatorial Workshop, and the Asian Curatorial Forum to connect with international professionals and organizations. In order to further expand professional networks, the Foundation commissioned to establish “Curating Asia International (CAI)” and build Taiwan’s first online publishing platform with the aim of exploring the global curatorial culture of contemporary art. The result is “Curatography.”

 

Curatography is an electronic journal, dedicated to the exploration of contemporary art and curatorial culture. It is produced by Curating Asia International (CAI).  The publication examines the geopolitical dimensions of cultural production in East and Southeast Asia, adopting a reflexive stance towards curatorial practice and the way it has generated an interdisciplinary knowledge of Asia today. 

 

Curation in the twenty-first century is marked not only by its expanding role in society but also by its changing functions and responsibilities. The neologism “curatography,” is thus born out of the necessity to retroactively define shifting  meanings of “curator” and “curation”. The journal will examine curatorial practices across various Asian societies, in order to seek out their different genealogies, resist the “exhibition amnesia” of the white cube, and take a measure of their ontological dimensions.

 

Taiwan’s National Culture and Arts Foundation (NCAF) has supported curatorial practices for more than a decade. NCAF has not only funded numerous international exhibitions and curatorial projects by independent curators, but has also supported conferences, symposiums, and workshops such as the “Curators’ Intensive Taipei 19 (CIT19)” (2019) and conferences in Dhaka and New Delhi (2017, 2019).  Curatography was launched in part from the momentum of these grants, and particularly on account of the curators, artists, and scholars, who’ve shown interest in contributing to the field of inter-Asian curatorial culture.

Newsletter

    Editorial Board
    Hongjohn LIN
    Chief Editor
    Hongjohn Lin is an artist, writer and curator. Graduated from New York University in Arts and Humanities with Ph.D. He has participated in exhibitions including Taipei Biennial(2004), the Manchester Asian Triennial 2008, the Rotterdam Film Festival 2008, and the 2012 Taipei Biennial, Guangzhou Triennial (2015), and China Asia Biennial (2014). Lin was curator of the Taiwan Pavilion Atopia, Venice Biennial 2007, co-curator of 2010 Taipei Biennial (with Tirdad Zolghadr), and numerous curatorial projects such as Taizhong’s The Good Place (2002) and Live Ammo (2012).
    Sandy Hsiu-chih LO
    Chief Editor
    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 “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.”  
    Zian CHEN
    Chief Editor

    Zian Chen works as contributing editor for Ocula. As a writer and researcher, he collaborates with artists to develop alternative frameworks for thinking and speculation. Together with artist Ho Rui An, they conducted a research residency in Duke Kunshan University (2023). He is one of the founding members of Pailang Museum of Settler Selves (2022–), an editor-in-residence for Compost in ICA NYU Shanghai (2021–2022), and one of the editors for Made in Public (2022) and Arrow Factory: The Last Five Years (2020). He has also curated Production Fever 2008: Study Materials in Nida Art Colony, Nida (2022). In 2020–21, he was one of the founding editors for Heichi Magazine, an online journal for contemporary art in Chinese and English.

    Collaborations

    Founded in 1996, the NCAF plays a professional role in supporting the arts field through its grant programs, R&D projects, and resource development initiatives. It has also built an Arts & Business partnership platform to develop channels of resources from the private sectors.

    Since 2015 the NCAF has developed international dimensions in its grant policy scheme, and has been building global networks through external partnerships. Starting from 2018, the NCAF takes further initiatives in building institutional networks with global arts communities. On Inclusive Arts, the NCAF has started its exploration of the related issues, and is scheming a new program to support the engagement of Taiwanese art fields on associated topics.

     

     

     

     

    Launched by the National Culture and Arts Foundation (NCAF) in 2018, ARTWAVE-Taiwan International Arts Network is a global online platform for the connection between the Taiwanese art world and the world.  


    The name ARTWAVE was inspired by the combination of TW (Taiwan), ART and the word WAVE, which denotes the geographical location of Taiwan where oceanic currents converge and international interactions bloom. In terms of its operation, ARTWAVE not only continues in developing the network formed throughout the years, it also actively seeks collaborations with domestic and foreign arts and cultural organizations in hope of creating a strong brand that promotes Taiwanese artists and their works among the international art communities. 

    Curating Asia International (CAI)

    Curating Asia International (CAI) is a network that brings together curators, artists, art educator, and cultural workers for and of Asia. Based in Taipei, CAI focuses on diverse roles of contemporary curators with wide-ranging praxis of research, exhibition–making, and community-building. We believe that in sharing our experience and knowledge through a genuine platform a transformation of cultural reality can be perceived. With the awareness of a heterogeneous Asia in embodying its complexities, a sustainable cultural community can therefore be developed.

    The National Culture and Arts Foundation and the Taipei Fine Arts Museum co-organize the Curators’ Intensive Taipei 19 (CIT 19) in 2019. As a platform established by the ARTWAVE─Taiwan International Arts Network and programmed by TheCube Project Space, the CIT19 accentuates the discussion and contemplation on the profession of contemporary curating. It proceeds in a two-pronged fashion; to wit, international conference and workshops, insofar as to echo the diversification of contemporary curatorial approaches, forge a congenial platform for international dialogue and exchange, build up a strong network of art practitioners from the four corners of the world, and get the curatorial education into a state of greater profoundness.
    Team

    Project Host: Hongjohn Lin

    Project Co-Host: Sandy Hsiu-Chih Lo
    Project Manager: Joanna Yu-Nung Chung

    Website Concept: J. Chen, Cheng-Tao Chen, Esther y.c. Lin

    Website Designer: J. Chen

    Website Developer: Cheng-Tao Chen

    Contact


      Archive
      Archive
      Issue 12 Grassroots Curating in Asia
      Introduction / Grassroots Curating in Asia Zian Chen
      Strolling and Catching a Show: On the Performance Walks of Macau-Based Art Group“Step Out” Wu Sih-Fong
      Queers and Art in Precarity: Reflections on NGOs and Curatorial Practices in Beijing Yang Zi
      Musing the Artistic Alchemy: Reflections on the Artist-Curator Model of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale Anushka Rajendran

      Issue 11 Ethics of Flourishing Onto-Epistemologies
      Introduction / Ethics of Flourishing Onto-Epistemologies Sandy Hsiu-chih Lo
      A Chronicle of “the Open World” and the Chiang Rai Biennale 2023 Sorayut Aiem-UeaYut
      The Exhibition Is Not Enough: Evolving Trends in Indonesian Art Biennials Ayos Purwoaji
      Streaming Discourse: Phnom Penh as Currents of Dialogues Pen Sereypagna and Vuth Lyno

      Issue 10 Exhibition Amnesia
      Introduction / Exhibition Amnesia, or, the Apparatus of Speculative Curating Hongjohn Lin
      How to Build an Exhibition Archive - A Preliminary Proposal from a Generative Studies Perspective Lin Chi-Ming
      Reformulating the Architecture of Exhibitions Miya Yoshida
      Orality and Its Amnesia in the Mist of Metalanguage Tai-Sung Chen

      Issue 9 Curating Against Forgetting
      Editorial / Transgressing Epistemic Boundaries Zian Chen
      Icon and Network: Solidarity’s Mediums and a Materialist Internationalism Ho Rui An
      Settlers and the Unhomely: The Cinematic Visions of Infrastructure in Eastern Taiwan Zian Chen and Chi-Yu Wu
      Memories of Underdevelopment: Revisiting Curatorial Methods and the Asian Context Wan-Yin Chen

      Issue 8 Reformatting Documenta with lumbung Formula: documenta fifteen
      Editorial / Reformatting documenta with lumbung Formula: documenta fifteen Sandy Hsiu-chih Lo
      Harvesting and a Single Story of Lumbung Putra Hidayatullah
      The Politics in the Ramayana / Ramakien in documenta fifteen: Decoding the Power of the Thai Ruling Class Jiandyin
      Malaise of Commons: on the Quality of the Relationships in documenta fifteen Hsiang-Pin Wu

      Issue 7 The Heterogeneous South
      Editorial / The Heterogeneous South Hongjohn Lin
      The South - An art of asking and listening Manray Hsu
      Uncharted Territory: The Roots of Curatorial Practices in Eastern Indonesia Ayos Purwoaji
      South Fever: The South as a Method in Taiwan Contemporary Curating Pei-Yi Lu

      Issue 6 The Beginning of Curating
      Editorial / The Beginning of Curating Sandy Hsiu-chih Lo
      Are Curators Really Needed? Bùi Kim Đĩnh
      The Documents 15 and the Concept of Lumbung ruangrupa
      The Three Axes of Curating: Ethics, Politics, and Aesthetics Sandy Hsiu-chih Lo

      Issue 5 Curatorial Episteme
      Editorial / Curatorial Episteme Hongjohn Lin
      Epistemic Encounters Henk Slager
      The Curatorial Thing Hongjohn Lin
      Ethics of Curating Meng-Shi Chen

      Issue 4 Curatorial Consciousness in the Times of Post-Nationalism
      Editorial / Curatorial Consciousness in the Times of Post-Nationalism Manray Hsu
      When Kacalisian Culture Meets the Vertical City: Contemporary Art from Greater Sandimen Manray Hsu
      Pathways and Challenges: Art History in the Context of Global Contemporary Art Jau-Lan Guo
      Curating Commemoration: Conditions of Political Choreography, a Performance Exhibition in Retrospect Sophie Goltz

      Issue 3 Curating Performativity
      Editorial / Curating Performativity I-wen Chang
      Choreographing Exhibitions: Performative Curatorgraphy in Taiwan I-wen Chang
      Living and Working Together in the Now Normal: Visual Arts and Co. at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre Pawit Mahasarinand
      The Curatorial as A Praxis of Disobedience Miya Yoshida

      Issue 2 Curators' Living Rooms
      Editorial / Curators' Living Rooms Sandy Hsiu-chih Lo
      Extended Living Room: Space and Conversation ruangrupa(Ade Darmawan, Mirwan Andan)
      Freeing the Weights of the Habitual Raqs Media Collective
      Curating Topography Sandy Hsiu-chih Lo

      Issue 1 Curatography
      Editorial / One Step Forward, Two Steps Backward Hongjohn Lin
      What is Curatography? Hongjohn Lin
      Les fleurs américaines Yoann Gourmel, Elodie Royer
      There are No Blank Slates Eileen Legaspi Ramirez
      Issue 12 Grassroots Curating in Asia

      Issue 11 Ethics of Flourishing Onto-Epistemologies

      Issue 10 Exhibition Amnesia

      Issue 9 Curating Against Forgetting

      Issue 8 Reformatting documenta with lumbung Formula: documenta fifteen

      Issue 7 The Heterogeneous South

      Issue 6 The Beginning of Curating

      Issue 5 Curatorial Episteme

      Issue 4 Curatorial Consciousness in the Times of Post-Nationalism

      Issue 3 Curating Performativity

      Issue 2 Curators' Living Rooms

      Issue 1 Curatography