The Artist-Curator Relationship
How does trust wager into the negotiations required of artists and curators to complete a project? Considering that the artist-curator relationship has become almost required – even co-dependent – in the ways that art is made public, what role does trust play in establishing that relationship? How is the artist’s trust different from the curator’s trust? What does language have to do with it? How are boundaries maintained between artistic process and curatorial discourse? If the initiation of a project requires a leap of faith from both parties, how is trust built? What tools might one come up with to deal with situations where trust isn’t a given, or where established trust is broken?
C Magazine posed these questions to more than a dozen artists and curators. This is what they said.
Erdem Taşdelen
A structural inequality is built into working relationships between curators and artists where curators operate as gatekeepers who wield the institutional (or sometimes independent) power to disseminate artists’ works. As a seasoned emerging artist unsure when I will have finally emerged, I am all too aware of the intricacies of this awkward but unspoken dynamic. Inviting a curator over for a studio visit, for instance, is often an uncomfortable thing to do. Although I understand that their familiarity with my practice will be mutually beneficial, I am worried about appearing to be implicitly asking for something more. I am therefore attentive to how each curator navigates the ethical dimensions of their position of power, which in turn affects how much I trust them.
Do they treat me as an equal participant in our exchange? Do they engage in conversation, as opposed to passively listening? Do they communicate their own curatorial interests? If we end up working together on a new project, will they be respectful of my artistic decisions? Will they be involved in the process of procuring resources for the project to be realized to its best potential, or conversely, is there a risk of them disengaging during its development? Further down the road, will they be at least partially present while the technicians and I install the work in an exhibition? When the project is completed, will they reflect on the process and the outcome with me? These are some of the questions that pertain to the kind of conduct that I believe engenders lasting trust, of which curators no doubt have their own versions.
is a Turkish-Canadian artist whose diverse projects, often characterized by a
