The Knowing-Body Compass in Curatorial Practices

Abstract

In this article, Suely Rolnik positions the curator in the context of integrated worldwide capitalism, suggesting that the “colonial-capitalistic unconscious” tends to drive practices of curation across the globe. She highlights two different curatorial vectors and how these approaches to curation relate to the “knowing-body.” Using artist Lygia Clark's Caminhando (Walking) to problematize the politics of desire, Rolnik explores how curation practices might liberate themselves from capitalist-colonial micropolitics, as well as how curators negotiate the safeguard of artistic practices, poetics, and the ethical compass that guides them, with the demands of integrated worldwide capitalism and its contemporary power in the field of art.