Curating Labour: Troubles with Gender and Dispossession in the Exhibition Space

<p><em>Curating Labour</em> focuses on radical exhibition practices addressing material conditions rooted in the struggle for “bread-and-butter.” Departing from underrated exhibition projects in Scandinavia, including <em>The Artists’ Situation</em> (UKS, Oslo, 1971) and <em>Work—Don’t Wear Yourself Out!</em> (Oktober, Stockholm; Fotogalleriet, Oslo; and other venues, 1974–78), the book foregrounds revolutionary feminist curatorial approaches. It tackles how highlighting labour in the exhibition space seeks to overturn prescriptive societal structures.</p> <p><em>Curating Labour</em> claims soft forms of curating and looks into how to transfer these feminist strategies into today’s curatorial practices. It analyses the work of small- and medium-sized institutions and their alternative knowledge-building practices, and it problematises curating and the co-optation of representation by collecting writings on the non-conformant body as the site of trauma. While art is produced in more places than one—and especially outside the museum and the white cube—curating rests on such an exceptionality of the arts, which permeates society on many levels, beyond its recognised cathedrals. A central claim of the book is that the exhibition space must remain an active public space if we are to overthrow mainstream norms. Following such a view, the curator should dispute hegemonic tools in the aesthetic sphere to propose new aesthetic forms, constantly upholding the yet-unknown and the yet-to-be-accepted as fundamental motors for emancipation.</p>