A&Q: Curation as Decolonial Practice

Abstract

A&QCuration as Decolonial Practice Laura Kina, Alexandra Chang (bio), Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis (bio), and Thea Quiray Tagle (bio) Curation as Decolonial Practice Laura Kina this a&q brings three contemporary Asian American curators— Alexandra Chang, Lawrence- Minh Bùi Davis, and Thea Quiray Tagle— into conversation to discuss how their recent curatorial projects have created interventions in Asian American/Asian diasporic art. The feature focuses on how they have critically engaged with issues of representation, identity, and inclusivity, working both inside and outside institutions to effect change. As they shared their specific projects, the respondents reflected on broader issues of care, positionality, and decolonization in the arts. Four questions were posed, and they were invited to choose to answer one, all, or a combination of the following questions: 1. How did your curatorial project intervene in Asian American/Asian diasporic artistic representation and identity? 2. How did your project provide alternative and new approaches for community engagement? 3. How has your work as a curator decolonized museum or institutional spaces? 4. How does your curatorship dialogue with, enrich, or challenge the mainstream discourse of American art and contemporary art? Embedded within these four prompts were subquestions asking contributors to consider how they see their role as a curator; what inspired them to curate or organize their project; what their process and criteria were for selecting artists and artworks; or how they engaged aesthetics, form, or style. We asked whether the COVID- 19 pandemic or the U.S. summer 2020 racial reckoning impacted their programming and, if so, what changed. Did they use technology or other innovative organizing strategies to reach [End Page 46] audiences beyond the gallery and museum walls or more diverse audiences? We encouraged participants to talk about navigating institutional bias, structural racism, the pipeline for opportunities, funding, working inside and outside institutions, or navigating community partnerships and innovative collaborations. Why does this work matter beyond Asian America? What are the stakes? Their responses open a discussion on the possibilities and challenges of decolonizing art history and museums through Asian American/Asian diasporic curatorial practice. Relationality and worlding were reoccurring themes, with respondents emphasizing the important role of trust and care in their relationships with artists, institutions, and communities. As Thea Quiray Tagle writes, “What worlds are we purposefully and inadvertently creating through our curation, our writing, our teaching, and all our practices of being in relation?” Finally, questions of breaking down territorial, ethnic, and cultural boundaries were raised in Alexandra Chang’s work on Chinese Caribbean art and of breaking down barriers in genre in Lawrence- Minh Bùi Davis’s discussion of Asian American literature. Taken all together, their responses advocate for an activist curatorial practice that centers on listening, witnessing, and care. This starts with the decolonial work of looking inward and moves to action, as Davis writes, through “solidarity arts economy principles: cooperative structures, more equitable distribution of resources, and shared commitments to justice.” Relationships, Care, and Interrogating Curatorial Practice Alexandra Chang I am constantly interrogating my role as a curator and my positionality within projects. They shift with time and projects. And I, too, change, learning and emerging through new experiences. Several thoughts often surface with the terminology of curator: the ideas of selection, of presentation, of organizing, of maintaining. These are very institutional terminologies. I’ve recently been thinking about the idea of Care in terms of curation and the institution, along with conversations that I’ve been having with a group of artists, writers, and curators calling ourselves “godzilla eleven.” And I’ve been thinking about Care during the pandemic in terms of the care of those who may be most at risk, those who are not [End Page 47] getting care, and also in relation to family, friends, and colleagues. How do we practice care every day—in our own relationships with the people both in and outside of our institutions, groups, and direct communities. How do we break down the institutional structures and terminologies that other us into objects or labor to foreground practices of relationships and balance? Perhaps more intimate person- to- person ideas of care, relationship building, and collaboration are at the foundation...