Research-Based Exhibitions: Between Curatorial Spatiality and Space as Method

Analyzing the exhibition “Archiving the Spaces of Anxiety” as an exemplary response to the OCAT Institute’s call for research-based curatorial projects, this essay compares the curator Chen Shuyu’s proposition of “curatorial spatiality,” situated in the lineage of artistic research, with the historiography of experimental Chinese art from the 1980s. The latter has been studied extensively by art historian Wu Hung, who also serves as OCAT’s Director, and explains research-based exhibitions evoking his own curatorial endeavors on Chinese art. This juxtaposition of interpretative frameworks aims to reveal the shared questions of space and approaches toward totality, despite diverging historical and artistic contexts. Besides the two directions focused on, this essay also considers the plurality of knowledge systems, experimental methods, and archival potentials by examining the relationship between research and exhibition.