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© Corinna Ghaznavi, 2005. Used by permission
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Thinking Through Curating
by Corinna Ghaznavi
Date: 16 July 2005
Event: Banff
Corinna Ghaznavi
Corinna Ghaznavi is an independent curator, freelance critic and adjunct curator for the Tom Thomson Memorial Art Gallery, Owen Sound, Ontario. Her curatorial practice investigates the intersections of science, nature and culture. She is interested in how artists find and offer meaning in our culture as a way to make sense of the contemporary. She holds a BA in art history from the Albert-Ludwigs University in Freiburg, Breisgau, Germany, and a MA in art history from the Heinrich-Heine University in Dusseldorf, Germany. She has written numerous catalogue essays and her critical writing has appeared in national and international art publications, including Flash Art, ESPACE, Canadian Art, Parachute, Prefix, and Artpress. With the Banff Centre Curatorial Department she contributed to the publication Computer Voices / Speaking Machines (2001). Ghaznavi's most recent exhibitions include; The Conative Object, York Quay Gallery, Toronto, The Wonderland: Claudia Klucaric and Kate Wison, Tom Thomsom Memorial Art Gallery, Owen Sound and Neutrinos They Are Very Small: Rebecca Diederichs, Gordon Hicks, Sally Mackay, Art Gallery of Sudbury, Sudbury. She has curated other exhibitions in Banff, Toronto, Stratford, Saskatoon and the Netherlands.
Abstract
My background is European art history and I find myself working within the vein of contemporary history, theory, and discourse in order to contribute to history. As a historian I see that it is the arts that are the mark and measure of civilizations; artifacts, architecture, sculpture, music, literature, etc. are what remain of a culture and are used to analyze what we consider significant eras and events. Artifacts, art objects, and other remains of cultural production are a demonstration of how different cultures and communities made sense of their experiences and surroundings. They demonstrate a desire to understand the world as well as how the world was envisioned and what ones relationship to it was.
My curatorial approach is not historical, discipline-based or interested in tapping into trends but rather functions conceptually: it focusses on bringing together two or more artists around a single theme that makes both the ideas around the exhibition and the work of the artist multi-layered to the end that one considers things in a new or different way. Artists are singularly apt at being able to contribute to our zeitgeist in a unique way. Spurred by creativity and intellect they can offer insights that can open up ways of understanding this zeitgeist. By working with artists interested in this process I hope to contribute to a larger cultural discourse as it unfolds and ultimately evolves into history.
My role is to develop ideas that lead into a collaborative process-based working relationship with the artists I approach in order to examine issues that appear crucial to me: critically assessing contemporary culture, investigating the way that meaning is made, complexifying the world in a time when the surface is rarely scratched and time is short. My curatorial voice tries to make sense of, tries to get people to re-think, to slow down, to delve beneath the surface and excavate rather than to simply consume. It does not summarize or offer answers; rather, it asks questions that hopefully lead to some contemplation, to discussion, and to new thoughts on the world around us.
Art is woven into the fabric of each zeitgeist along with politics, economics, sociology, etc. It does not exist in a vacuum and it is able to train its eye on and comment on contemporaneity with an urgency and relevance that is unique. Blurring distinctions between disciplines is a natural way for me to work because art and science, stories and theories, fact and fiction are not clearly defined separate areas but by necessity overlap and only together can begin to offer fragments of a whole. Offering open-ended stories as a way to investigate and come closer to understanding perception, how we make sense of things, and what defines our particular time are at the core of what motivates me. By crafting together language (theory) and material (the art object) I hope, perhaps optimitstically, to contribute to a larger cultural discourse, and ultimately history in terms of offering alternative interpretations, re-interpretations, and subjective visions of the world in order to regain complexity, ambiguity, and perhaps, even insight.