Talks

Didem Yazici

Curatorial Practice
Infra-Curatorial

Fr 24th Feb, 6 pm 6.K04
Postgraduate Programme in Curating, ZHdK

https://vimeo.com/207461591

Curatorial Practice: Didem Yazici
Infra-Curatorial

“Under the most oppressive regimes, a man, a woman, can keep and experience their freedom: freedom is a state of mind. It is born (and often dies) in the mind. It’s often called dignity, refusal, rebellion.” Etel Adnan

Whenever we step into a curatorial ground or exhibition space, we also enter a state of mind. After we leave an exhibition room or experience a curatorial work, we may not remember everything we have seen, yet feelings and fragments of thoughts persist. This ‘post-exhibition’ is a space of contemplation propelled by traces drawn by the viewer. As an infra-Curatorial project at the ongoing 11th Shanghai Biennale, ‘Freedom is a State of Mind’ desires to catch this moment and get to the heart of the artistic – curatorial logic and imagination, not only through artworks, but by also sharing footnotes, poems, resonations, texts, voices, collages and other visual materials. The words of Etel Adnan open up oceans and here become a small universe within other universes, with Khaled Barakeh, Etel Adnan, Şener Özmen, Nicholas Wells and István Zsíros.

In this talk, I will focus on the notion of the infra-Curatorial in the context of the Shanghai Biennale; how it existed as both an exhibition within an exhibition and as a complete whole. (shanghaibiennale.org/en/)

Didem Yazıcı is a curator and writer currently based in Berlin. As a member of the curatorial team of Museum für Neue Kunst, Freiburg, she curated exhibitions, video programs and co-edited exhibition catalogues. She was recently a curator-in-residence at the Goethe Institute Cairo and participated in the infra-curatorial platform of the 11th Shanghai Biennale, where she curated ‘Freedom is a State of Mind’. Previously, she was the researcher and guest curator at the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart in 2013. She worked at dOCUMENTA (13) as a project assistant.