Curator As Lead Artist

My thesis research methodology investigates the spaces between curatorial and artistic practices. More specifically, I am interested in the boundaries and slippages between these separately defined disciplines, and the potential that exists in testing points of crossover and confusion. With this in mind, this thesis considers the curator as collaborator as artist position, to explore beyond the conventional expectation that artists make works of art which curators then display. Through my work, I attempt to demonstrate the opportunities and challenges that arise when curators take on increasingly authorial and creative roles in both the production and presentation of the work of others. Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, a curator who has in the past refused to use this professional designation, notes that “the curator is the most emblematic worker of the cognitive age” (Balzar 9). Christov-Bakargiev’s quote is an important place to begin my research because although she acknowledges that curators are significant, she hesitates to identify as one, demonstrated by her use of the term agent and such (Judah). If curators are at the forefront of cultural production, where does that put the artists? This thesis project is a way to investigate, through creative and material practice, the historical and contemporary discourse around a specific type of relationship between curating and art making: the area where the labour of curators and artists intersects. Additionally, it attempts to blur and reframe the ethical questions raised specifically regarding issues of authorship, artistic responsibility, collaboration, and contextual engagement. In our spectacle driven culture with a multitude of content readily available, we increasingly value those able to reshape, select, and organize this content in generative ways. New modes of practice, organized around the position of a kind of lead artist or curatorial artist, provide a critical space for rethinking the possibilities of making, postproduction, representation, and display.