Autotheory as Feminist Practice in Art, Writing and Criticism, Lauren Fournier

Review of: Autotheory as Feminist Practice in Art, Writing and Criticism, Lauren FournierCambridge, MA and London: MIT Press (2021), 320 pp., h/bk,ISBN: 978-0-26204-556-8, US $35.00

The Mothers of Tiananmen: Curating Social Justice

Focusing on the activist exhibition The Mothers of Tiananmen (2019), this article examines my methodology of curating for social action and justice using international collaboration and participatory arts-as-research. The exhibition responded to the ongoing campaign for justice for the victims and survivors of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, as well as sought to support women’s creative resistance and voice. The Mothers of Tiananmen was co-created with artist Mei Yuk Wong, the 64 Museum (Hong Kong), and artists participating in the Centre for International Women Artists (Manchester). The context for the exhibition is the city of Manchester, which has one of the highest Chinese populations in England, along with a diverse international demographic with over 200 languages spoken. Through this case study, curating is presented as a creative and critical tool by which to respond to the range of justice and activist concerns of international and diasporic communities.

Contextile 2020: Places of Memory ‐ Interdiscourses of a Textile Territory, Artistic Residency Programme

Curated by Cláudia Melo, Guimarães, Portugal, 5 September‐25 October 2020

Social Justice and Work in Art Institutions

Even though social justice struggles are often thematized in curatorial practice and discourse, their demands are rarely implemented in art-institutional policies and infrastructure. In investigating the anatomy of this conundrum, politically incisive redefinitions of institutional usership and participation, and analysis of their close relation to (issues of) work, would benefit strategies around diversity in the context of art-institutional participation. The theory of ‘instituent praxis’ and its insistence on inventive and cooperative rule-making can contribute to addressing curatorially absent/unjust regulation and its ensuing ethical/affective gaps in relation to under-represented or non-represented subjectivities or constituencies, such as ethnic minorities and displaced asylum seekers.

Decolonizing the Colony: Challenges to Systemic Change in the American Art Museum

This article seeks to identify impediments to, as well as opportunities for, change in American art museums in the face of demands for social justice and greater inclusivity. Focusing specifically on the representation of American art in well-established encyclopaedic museums, I argue that inherited collections and taxonomies, mapped onto the physical spaces of museums, limit the speed and degree to which aesthetic priorities, values and narratives may adapt in order to meet shifting demographics and visitor expectations. In effect, the challenge for many museums is to confront and navigate an institutionalized form of white supremacy baked into their intellectual and material foundations. I end by analysing several recent strategies that have aimed at dismantling conventions and complicating the canon.

Natalie Lo, The Days before the Silent Spring

Curated by Qu Chang, WMA, Hong Kong, 15 December 2020‐15 January 2021

Anticorps

Curated by Daria de Beauvais, Adélaïde Blanc, Cédric Fauq, Yoann Gourmel, Vittoria Matarrese, François Piron and Hugo Vitrani, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France, 23 October 2020‐28 February 2021

Migration: Traces in an Art Collection, Maria Lind and Cecilia Widenheim (eds)

Review of: Migration: Traces in an Art Collection, Maria Lind and Cecilia Widenheim (eds)Berlin: Sternberg Press (2021), 320 pp., p/bk,ISBN: 978-3-95679-547-3, US $29.95

Art, Life and Capitalist Social Reproduction: Curating Social Practice

Addressing the latest encounter between feminist politics and art, this article identifies a curatorially driven turn towards social reproduction processes and infrastructures across the contemporary art field. It analyses the curatorial mediation of social practice through two UK-based projects that foreground social and economic justice issues, specifically through the politics and economies of food: Effy Harle and Finbar Prior’s Wandering Womb (2018), commissioned by Manual Labours for Nottingham Contemporary, and WochenKlausur’s Women-led Workers’ Cooperative (2013), initiated through Glasgow’s Centre for Contemporary Arts as part of the ECONOMY exhibition project. The central argument is that a rigorous engagement with social reproduction perspectives and theoretical vectors is vital to the analysis and critique of feminist curatorial work within the contemporary art institution.