Curating the Touch Art Festival
Note: The Touch Art Festival ends on Mar 25. I highly recommend it. BOOK A TOUR NOW, this is the only way to enter the gallery space.
The exhibition at the Touch Art Festival provides important reflection on how to curate exhibitions for community art and socially-engaged arts.
There are several components in the Touch Art Festival, so I would say that the entire project is a socially-engaged arts project with components of varying collaboration and participation. The exhibiting artists worked in pairs with artists having normal vision and visual-impairment (there are plenty of issues for reflection).
My concept of good curation includes 2 things
- Good concept
- Connecting the concept with the viewers in a way true to the experience intended by the artist
Specificity of the ‘community’ as an aesthetic consideration
The theme of the festival provides a clear focus for the various activities. The curator used this specificity to guide the experience of the exhibition. However, one of the visually-impaired artist said that he wanted to create an artwork for people of all visual capacity. Thus, the aesthetic of his artwork was informed by the lived experience and not just visual experience of visually-impaired people. This decision is made to not reduce people with visual impairment to this one aspect, and it is achieved through an artistic decision.
This is a common tension among community/identity focused work: Is this specificity (honouring uniqueness) or stereotyping?
Logistics and aesthetics: Connecting 2 worlds of experience
The experience of each artwork is heavily influenced by the logistics and designed that enable the artwork to be experienced. During the artist sharing (which I hosted), there were critical and constructive (and not mean) exchanges among the curator and the artists about several things.
- Why must it be pitch black? Sight impairment includes a range of visual state
- Why not let participants take off their blindfolds before they leave the exhibition?
There was a good discussion regarding both logistical and artistic considerations. So before the session overran, I wrapped it up and encouraged interested parties to stay to continue.
Dewey, in Art as Experience, explains that viewing an artwork is the exchange of the culture and worlds. Curators use captions, statements, interviewees, exhibition layout to guide viewers, prepping mental states, knowledge and atmosphere of the viewers to understand the artworks. In this exhibition, the blindfolded experience aided by a walking stick and oral guide provides safety in uncertain sightlessness that immerses the audience temporarily in the experience of people with visual impairment.
Logistics limited audience’s time in the exhibition. Audience must visit the exhibition by booking the tour. The first tour felt like an exploration. A second tour is needed if one wishes to really feel the work.
Perhaps a bit less guidance and safety would provide a more ‘real’ experience? There is always more to be experimented, so each experiment should be executed and evaluated well. The current tour is structured for accessible audience ‘viewing’ that provides a clear opening and end to the entire experience. The trade-off is more room for personal exploration of the artworks.
Thinking further
‘Touch Art’ is certainly a good connection point with people with visual impairment, but is this really the beauty and sensual stimulation they find in life? Would sound-based art be a more convenient source of experience? This would be a change from the ‘touch’ centered connection point.
