Under My Skin: Critical Art and Its Impact

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between criticality, art and curatorial practice, and the condition of migration. Focussing on curated events in Lincoln, London and Liverpool, the argument centres on how the destabilising practices of curation might provoke sensorial and social connections and disruptions between and across art and lived experience. Furthermore, it is suggested that the ways in which art irrupts into urban sensibility may be - both intentionally and surprisingly - powerful, violent, and mournful (or 'radioactive'). Finally, the article comments on the curated work as a pathway to impact, noting both the irony and the serendipity of social consequences in an audit culture of knowledge production.