The 12th edition will run in person, for the first time in two years, at Experimenter – Hindustan Road, 4 & 5 November 2022
The Experimenter Curators’ Hub returns for its 12th edition, hosted in person, for the first time in two years, at Experimenter – Hindustan Road on 4 & 5 November 2022. Experimenter Curators’ Hub is a platform for developing and sustaining discourse on curatorial practice and exhibition-making through critical discussion and debate.
To find out more about this year’s Hub, ArtReview spoke with Experimenter cofounders Prateek and Priyanka Raja.
ArtReview What does bringing the Curator’s Hub back to an in-person event mean for the project?
Prateek and Priyanka Raja The Curators’ Hub is essentially about dialogue and intimacy, and unlike a traditional conference or a symposium, it is crucial to have free flowing dialogue, real time through conversation and constructive debate. As a viewer one can view the proceedings of the Hub online but as a participant and someone who is present on-site, the experience is completely different and holistic. One of the crucial objectives of the Hub is the creation of a fearless, free space that allows for a certain candidness between the curators and the audience, further enhanced by a closeness that the Hub has traditionally enabled. And hence we were very keen to return to its physical iteration.
While the Hub will be streamed online on our channels and that of our partners’ for a wider reach, the magic of the hub is in person. For the hub, a physical event means a certain realness, an immediacy and a return to tactility of thoughts and ideas.
AR What motivated you to set up the Curator’s Hub in the first place and has the rationale behind it evolved over time?
P&PR The Hub was started 12 years ago out of a personal interest to learn and be able to bring to our city, key thinkers and practitioners, thinkers whom we could share with our erudite and extremely well cross-referenced audience. The Hub continues to pursue exactly what it had all those years ago – build dialogue and encourage debate. The potential of unbound conversation, as a tool for constructive thought, has a tremendous strength and enables possibilities between curators, artists and thinkers that go far beyond the confines of the Hub. This is a key objective. When we began, we had hoped to add to our language on curatorial practice and build a sustainable discourse to freely share fragilities and challenges, opportunities and possibilities in a thought-provoking environment and that is where we find ourselves with the Hub.
AR The line-up for this year, as with previous editions, includes a range of curators with different interests and backgrounds, do you think what they share is greater than what makes them different? Or is the point to do with how they have adapted to different conditions?
P&PR This year’s line-up is very diverse, and all of them have brilliant points of view for not only the exhibitions they curate but also for the work they do that goes beyond the curatorial practices. We are interested in methodologies and how they think and also in their relationships with artists. They are also practitioners who have nurtured nascent ideas and built communities that have grown over the years, and have breathed into these projects—life and continuity. We are interested in many such initiatives this year. Yes, their differences make them greater than what they share and, in fact, their coming together makes them collectively a very powerful set of voices, we would like to hear more from.
AR Indeed some of them are not exactly full-time curators at all, but rather incorporate curating (if they do it all) into a wider practice. What is the role of the curator today and do you think that it has changed over the course of the Curator’s Hub’s existence?
P&PR The role of the curator has vastly transformed over the years, especially in the last decade. They are not fixed exhibition makers anymore and nor are they individuals that work in silos. Curators have adapted and adopted a much wider area of influence. Therefore, curators today think widely and are influenced by a wide range of work and practices. I think we have to expand our own notions of how we consider curatorial practices. Some of the people we have invited this year have forged ahead against the grain in many situations that have been uphill and their actions have brought in practices that one would not consider in the traditional realm of contemporary art. It is amusing that even contemporary art can become traditional if we do not expand its scope or adapt to the current moment. If we are able to be nimble, and are able to accept and discuss practices that are truly pushing the boundaries of art to include ideas of community, collective action, indigenous work, only then we will be able to truly question history, and possibly build a more holistic understanding of our contemporary moment. Curatorial practices also have to evolve in a similar way.
AR You have a human rights lawyer speaking. How can or does art address an issue that exists in a more immediate way in the ‘real’ world?
P&PR We have growing situation at hand, especially in subcontinent and in many parts of the world, where we are constantly seeing a reduction in the space for free expression, and the rise of restrictive boundaries. It is through work of people like Karuna Nundy, who is a human rights lawyer and our guest speaker this year, we are able to possibly think of how we can, as a community protect a plurality of voice. Within our country, there are thousands of young voices of dissent that are incarcerated, some of them simply because they voice dissent and speak of the brutality of the current times. So does art in many ways, even if it may not be rooted always in the ‘real’ world. If we are able to create a network and build a dialogue, it is extremely important for the future to come.
AR The Curator’s Hub is, in a way, a space for a free exchange of ideas and opinions. Do you think creating such spaces has become more urgent in recent years. Perhaps with reference to India in particular?
P&PR Yes, it is very urgent. Space for free exchange of ideas and opinions, where one can have a healthy, constructive conversation and an argument based on reason and evidence is a quickly shrinking space not only in India and the subcontinent but in the rest of the world. The Curators’ Hub is one of those spaces where we can speak about all of this in an environment that is built on principles of freedom and fearlessness.
AR What do you hope for in terms of an outcome from this year’s edition?
P&PR We envision this years’ edition to be deeply engaging and intense, also because we are returning to the physical event after a gap of 2 years. In the meanwhile, the world has changed and there are several aspects that are crucial to speak about as artists, curators, institutions, writers, thinkers and everyone related to artistic production have faced unprecedented challenges. We have survived them and at times found ourselves helpless and at other times rallied together as a community to forge ahead. I feel the hub will be personal and discussions will run deep and long. I feel there will be a sense of positive fatigue at the end of the Hub and when we emerge from it, we will hopefully share a space ensconced in nurture and care.
