Statement of Curatorial Practice

An exhibition should not tell people what to think, nor simply arrange artworks and explain them. I see it as a way of directing attention while leaving room for doubt, contradiction and discovery. In conceiving an exhibition, I consider how people enter it, what it assumes they already know and whether it gives them time with the work. Once the curatorial direction is clear enough to guide, yet still open enough to be deepened by other forms of knowledge, interpretation, communication and learning enter the exhibition’s formation. They are not secondary layers applied after it has been resolved on paper, because how an exhibition meets the world is part of what the exhibition is.

Much of my curatorial judgement was formed before I entered institutions. Years spent as an artist, in independent theatre and in organising exhibitions and art events taught me to move between artistic intention and the practical demands of commissioning, production, administration and public responsibility. Institutional work later extended this understanding through collections, budgets, teams, governance and long-term stewardship. Together, these experiences taught me to regard production and administration not as support functions, but as part of the conditions through which an idea either retains its purpose or loses it.

By now, it should be evident that no project begins on neutral ground. Every place and institution carries its own histories, labour, authority, beliefs and practical limits, together with inherited assumptions about how art should be classified, displayed and encountered. Working from Singapore and across Asia, Europe and the Middle East has made me wary of arriving with a position already settled, or of treating conventions shaped by Western modernity as though they were universal. I do not reject those conventions by reflex. I ask whether they serve the work, the place and the people involved, whose knowledge the project needs and what may have to change when the existing terms do not suffice.

The need to examine those terms has become more pressing as cultural work is increasingly drawn towards speed, measurable reach and the obligation to remain visible. When visibility becomes an end in itself, complexity is flattened, the immediately recognisable is rewarded, and exhibitions risk becoming material for circulation rather than places of encounter. I would rather realise fewer exhibitions and give each the time and conditions to engage, surprise, deepen curiosity, teach without instructing and leave something behind after it closes. This may require redirecting resources, revising a process or reconsidering the curatorial or institutional framework through which the work is made public.

Protecting these conditions also shapes how I lead. I set direction and take responsibility for decisions, while drawing on the knowledge of artists, curators, specialists and colleagues to deepen and strengthen the project. Part of that responsibility is creating room for others to sharpen their judgement and develop their own positions through the work. I am less interested in agreement than in a framework capable of holding difference without becoming vague, and a process that protects the purpose of the work without closing it down too early.

I do not understand curating as a succession of outputs, but as the work of making room for attention, allowing knowledge to shape the project and enabling institutions to change when their existing terms no longer serve it. I am interested in what an exhibition can make possible when attention is protected, knowledge is allowed to deepen the work and institutions are prepared to change when their existing terms no longer serve it.

Curating does not end when art is placed before the world. It is also the work of changing the terms on which the world is able to meet it.