Curating the Living Room: A Queer Feminist Decolonial Intervention in Public and Private Spaces
Many scholars and institutional critique artists have made the role of the museum in the formation of national/state ideologies clear. However, interventions that extend this critique to the private space of the home and its domestic cultures and practices remain few and far between. This article considers the decolonial and queer feminist curatorial methodologies that framed the creation and development of the exhibition Unpacking the Living Room (MSVU University, Kjipuktuk/Halifax, Nova Scotia, 2018). This exhibition was posited as not only an intervention into the settler colonial taxonomies and display practices of Western museum systems and modernist white cube galleries, but also an invitation for guests visiting the Living Room to reflect on their own living room as sites where power and meaning and identity are constantly negotiated. This article outlines the process of curating Unpacking the Living Room and shares it methodological growth and research outcomes.