Curator and writer Raul Zamudio believes the contemporary art-viewer is sophisticated and, hence, art should not be didactic but challenge the viewer.
I have had exhibitions censored and artworks vandalised, presumably, because of their political content. Consequently, I have been accused of being a troublemaker, or one who seeks to ruffle feathers. This was said with humour and endearment by colleague friends, but there may be some truth in that.
Let’s start at the beginning. Tell us what that led to your journey in art writing and curation.
The first show I curated was in November of 2000 and was part of the Frère Independent New York Art Fair. It was hosted at the Hotel Chelsea Inn on 23rd St. in Manhattan. Frère was very much a trailblazer as none of the satellite fairs concurrently held in New York during the Armory Art Fair including NADA, VOLTA and SCOPE, had yet to occur. Frère’s mandate was that the exhibiting artists could not have gallery representation, and its inauguration was divided by four other curators and I. Each curator’s project was independent, and I was the only one who presented artists akin to an exhibition that focussed on the hotel as a concept rather than using it as a physical backdrop for a conventional display of artworks. Entitled The Parallax Hotel, my curatorial debut consisted of five artists who worked in various media and was international in scope. The artists exhibited have gone onto become quite well known. They include the Dutch collaborative duo that work under the moniker of Bik Van der Pol, the now deceased Stuart Croft, who was a video artist and filmmaker and professor at the Royal College of Art, UK-based Dominic McGill, Teressa Serrano, who at that time was working and living in New York and Mexico City, and Venezuelan artist Javier Téllez, who is New York-based.
What is the primary role of a curator?
If you are referring to pragmatics, it depends on the context. If it’s a group show, there is liberty in which the curator works more like the so-called auteur theory of curating, in which one has total control over all aspects of curatorial production to create, ideally, something that adds to the general discourse of not only art, but the greater field of culture. When a curator works within the context of the solo show, I believe, they act more as a sounding board or facilitator to the artist’s intention of what they might want to do. In either case, art has the power to make people think, to provoke, to be, like what Socrates said at his trial in his own defence, a gadfly that annoys the state. In the abstract, a curator should create exhibitions that engage larger questions of the world we live in, and fundamentally should never disregard art’s aesthetic power for soapboxing.
Signs Taken for Wonders. Jonas Mekas. Visual Arts Center, Vilnius, Lithuania. 2019.
Take us through your process and continuous frameworks of reference. How does your relationship with an artist evolve?
When working on a solo show, my role is that of catalyst and mediator to help the artist actualise their vision. What is also gratifying is when artists are surprised to see works that they created with a certain narrative in mind, and then see them under a whole other thematic context in which they could never imagine possible. I often mention to artists when I conduct studio visits that they should see their artworks as children. Once they “grow-up” and leave the studio, they can have a life that their creator may not have envisioned.
How do you describe yourself in the context of challenging people’s perspectives via your work?
I have had exhibitions censored and artworks vandalised, presumably because of their political content. Consequently, I have been accused of being a troublemaker, or one who seeks to ruffle feathers. This was said with humour and endearment by colleague friends, but there may be some truth in that.
How do you balance the contradicting elements of your work?
Again it depends on the context. But when I curate shows abroad, I often consider the locality where they will take place, in order to include artists from the area as well to engage the local audience in addressing issues pertinent to them or may have a historical or cultural connection to the exhibition.
Considering the recent socially-engaged turn of art, and by extension some curatorial practices, I try to seek a delicate balance between any political content to make sure it is not a case of preaching-to-the-choir. I think the art-viewing public today is very sophisticated and works should not be didactic but rather challenge and engender the audience to reach their own interpretative conclusions about any type of subject matter, either in individual artworks or the exhibition.
Orphans of Painting II. Ethan Cohen KuBe. Beacon, NY. 2019.
How do all your practices come together? What were the biggest challenges?
As an independent curator, the most challenging thing is financial. The positive aspect of working more autonomously and outside of the institutional setting is that there is more freedom to do things that are not dictated by the market or museum boards, trustees, or administrators.
Tell us about your own personal evolution in relation to the work you do.
The third show I curated was a group exhibition that opened on October 9, 2001 at Kean University in New Jersey. The opening was less than one month after the World Trade Center attacks and two days after George W. Bush invaded Afghanistan under the pretense of finding those responsible for the attacks. I had selected artworks in July and one was by a Chilean artist, a sculpture. It had a 30.48 cm x 30.48 cm sheet of glass on which rested two small digital scales. On top of one digital scale was a quantity of silver Chilean centavos and on the other was the same amount of copper US pennies, though the weight of both stacks were different as displayed on the scale’s LED screen. The sculpture was entitled Twin Towers. There was a panel that coincided with the exhibition where I discussed the show and artworks with three of the 15 exhibiting artists. During the Q and A with the audience, one person asked if I included Twin Towers for shock value, and another asked if I ever thought about taking it down as it could have been perceived as insensitive. It was at that moment that I recognised that curating is also an endeavour where one’s ethics is tested; for what I said to the person about its perceived insensitivity was that US just invaded a country on the idea of regime change and to spread democracy. Thus, to take the work down whether out of commemoration of the soldiers that had already died or those on 9/11, would dishonour their memory and their deaths would be in vain if I was to self-censor. It was a very harrowing time to make art and curate exhibitions, and those of us who were adamantly against invasion and the subsequent Iraqi War, were being demonised by Bush and his administration as treacherous. But I realised at that moment not only the power of art, but that my sense of ethics was deeply challenged, and that curating is not some activity separated from the larger social world.
I have also been interested in trying to expand the ontology of the art exhibition by making them much more dynamic. One example is a show I curated in Varna, Bulgaria titled Shape-Shifters.
Shape-Shifters explored the protean nature of identity in numerous contexts as well as the way some artworks are formally unstable in being hybrids of painting and sculpture or photography and performance, for example. The exhibition achieved this via a diverse group of fourteen artists that worked in various media including painting, work-on-paper, photography, sculpture, video, installation, sound art and performance. Apart from the individual works that uniquely addressed the exhibition thematic, its curatorial structure shape-shifted too, for it commenced with the presentation of seven foreign artists and one Bulgarian artist. The first Bulgarian artist selected independently from the curator, another Bulgarian artist to replace a foreign artist. Then that artist selected another and so forth, and the substitution of a foreign artist with Bulgarian artist occurred in increments throughout the exhibition’s duration, so every two days there was a new group of artworks. The exhibition ended with the inverse of how it began; that is, with a completely new presentation of artists consisting of seven Bulgarian artists and one foreign artist. This component ontologically expanded curatorship, the role of the artist, and the exhibition viewer’s experience. Shape-Shifters was inherently paradoxical; at what point was the exhibition complete: when it opened, during its run, or when it reached its termination date?
You have spent a lot of time amongst artists. What have you observed?
Most artists are excited about doing things that are curatorially ambitious and exciting. But some artists can be very conservative in their views, and I don’t mean just politics but their understanding of art, its history, as well as exhibition curation.
Which shows, performances and experiences have shaped your own creative process? Who are your maestros?
I find inspiration from any type of cultural activity that I find interesting. I don’t just look at art exhibitions, but my research is ostensibly pathologically unlimited. I would like to meet the curators you have already featured on the Indian Curator, as I find them fascinating.
The Cure of Folly. Galleria Contempo, Pergine Valsugana, Italy. 2019.
Upcoming shows
A Bomb, With Ribbon Around It (Press: A Bomb, With Ribbon Around It)
The Man Who Fell to Earth, 798 Beijing Biennial
More press: How to Philosophize with a Hammer, Javier Téllez: Alpha 60 (The Mind-Body Problem), Theater of Cruelty, The Crystal Land Revisited
Before you go – you might like to browse the Asian Curator curatorial archives . Contemporary art curators and international gallerists define their curatorial policies and share stories and insights about the inner runnings of the contemporary art world.