“Curating: the inner workings of the curatorial theory and practice” by Dr. Athena Hadji, Department of Interior Architecture and Environmental Design
DATE: Friday, April 8
TIME:13:40-15:40
PLACE: FFB-06
This event will be in English
Abstract:
The lecture comprises curatorial practices in action, employing as a case study the setup of the ideal exhibition. This project I crafted as a recipient of the NEON organization for contemporary art/ Whitechapel Gallery Emerging Curator Award and a shortlisted candidate for the Major Curatorial Award.
Central theme of the exhibition is the human body as a field of enquiry and negotiation; as a tangible manifestation of remembrance and oblivion; and as a battlefield and a field of glory. The exhibition is organized around the premise that the body is not a mere mediator with the world, translating the world into cognition: the body-as-cognition is the world and the world makes sense through corporeal confines and capacities. The works comprising the exhibition share an emphasis on the human form – as distorted, dismembered, disfigured or otherwise in a dystopian setting – and its power of evocation.
Contemporary art is often associated in a wide consensus and outside the confined realm of the cognoscenti with provocation. I am advocating for placing the evocative element in the epicenter of presenting art to the public and aim to stir a unique sentiment of aesthetic contemplation.
Aesthetics, as understood here, go back to the original source, the realm of the senses that is the somatic perception of the world and art as an active constituent thereof.
Biography:
Dr. Athena Hadji is an Archaeologist, Anthropologist and Art Historian (Ph.D. UC Berkeley) and award-nominated author. Her research, teaching, practice and publications pertain to issues of art, space, material cognition and the human condition. She has taught, lectured and conducted research in universities in Greece, Spain, Italy and the USA. Currently she is Visiting Assistant Professor at Bilkent University.