Fiction and cinema are primary catalysts for my curatorial practice. They inform my modes of thought and perception, while providing the techniques necessary to animate an exhibition’s narrative. Literature has provided the methodology for storytelling, while film has demonstrated how to articulate ideas through visuals. However, it is only the lived experience of reality that provides the requisite passion and substance.
I find my greatest inspiration at night. I take pleasure in wandering aimlessly through the city during the late hours, and I have curated numerous exhibitions that engage with the concept of the nighttime.
‘Day for Night’ refers to the transformative relationship between curating and fiction, cinema, and reality—a concept I describe as a ‘play within a play’. Technically, ‘Day for Night’ is a cinematic term: American films often capture night scenes during the day by employing filters to turn the sky a deep blue. It is also the title of a film by François Truffaut—a movie about a movie, where the overlapping fates of the characters and the actors create a profound resonance within the audience.
Beyond emotional impetus, an exhibition is about the articulation of concepts; it is the medium through which a concept becomes visible and perceptible. Nevertheless, a compelling story does not require the explanation of a concept—the narrative itself is the concept.
An intriguing story demands our total attention, compelling us to anticipate what follows. It must never be transparent at a glance; the resolution should involve multiple nuances and shifts. Curating is, in essence, storytelling—constructing a plot and awaiting its unfolding. It resembles a randomly rotating Rubik’s Cube, possessing infinite variables and overlapping transitions. Consequently, every artwork in an exhibition, and every moment in an artist’s career, becomes an individual word awaiting composition into different sentences, paragraphs, and chapters. At times, they coalesce into a poem—be it a quatrain or a sonnet; at others, they hunger for truth, evolving into a biography, a manifesto, or a historical record.
And so, at the conclusion of the story, if fortune permits, we may reap the fruits of meaning.
