Virtually Curated Exhibitions is the Change We Need in the Art World
- Maisha Mustanzir
- Mar 24, 2021
- 5 min read
As many of you already know, I have always posted my poetry and artwork on my website and on social media for people to read and view as they please. I have made my various social media platforms and my website a stage for my writing and creative work because I do not believe in the elitist idea that art can only be accessed by the few. If art is so important to humanity, shouldn’t everyone have access to it in some form or another? Since COVID-19 has blanketed the earth in a pandemic which has rendered everyone inaccessible, art has become more accessible. Art institutions and the art markets across the globe have been forced to become more transparent about their policies, make more art available online and make art more accessible.
On March 16, 2021, the NYU Abu Dhabi art gallery in the University of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates released an article by the title, “The NYUAD Art Gallery Presents an Exhibition Curated for Your Smartphone” on Hyperallergic. Living in Toronto, big named art institutions such as the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Royal Ontario Museum have jumped on the “making art available online” train; however, I have not seen any other galleries do what the NYU Abu Dhabi art gallery has done with their exhibition specifically curated for an online platform. While I am in no way against interacting with the physical materials of art and being present in their materiality, I do firmly believe that 2021 is the year when the art community needs to grow, change and rethink our relationship to art.
Over the past week, I have been reading Michael Ann Holly’s insightful and critical book, The Melancholy Art, which is a must read for all art history fanatics like myself. Whenever I read this book, I feel an overwhelming sense of melancholy wash over me. I crave to be close to art—to stand in its vicinity—and cry or laugh or simply look. There truly is a connection that human beings share with art that is entirely experiential. However, art on canvases and physical objects have not been the only mediums to make human beings feel this way. Films, video games and digital art have been able to emulate a part of the experience that “true art” shares with its audience. I do not think it is so outrageous to imagine art on a virtual platform. Actually, I think it is mandatory that more art become available on virtual platforms. Other mediums have been able to emulate parts of the sacred experience between the viewer and the viewed because they pushed the boundaries of their medium; so, why should art be the one to stay in the past?
In their book, Michael Ann Holly argues that art history writing is the way through which art historians fill the gap in space and time of objects which were experienced in the past. Much of the anxiety around making art available online is slowly letting go off the melancholy we have come to become so comfortable with and embracing something new and unknown. Tradition is great and necessary, but no tradition comes without change, and if the entire world can change in the blink of a year, art history and art writing can change and evolve with virtually curated art as well.
The beauty of NYUAD’s virtual exhibition is that it is not an exhibition from the “West”. One of the greatest points of accessibility for virtual exhibitions is that exhibitions from all around the world, especially non-western art can exist on the same platform as “western” exhibitions. Considering that western exhibitions have been dominating the art scene for so long, the turn to virtually curated exhibitions can be used to decolonize the way art is consumed. Not all art is deemed important enough to warrant an in-person experience, and in the art world, most art receives their importance from a Eurocentric system and pedagogy. The art world has been making their efforts globally to decolonize and share importance with art from all around the world, with their unique value systems; yet, making all art accessible on the same platform, virtual platform, was never in the forefront until now. NYUAD’s exhibition consists of artists of various backgrounds, Sophia Al-Maria, Zach Blas, Eva and Franco Mattes, micha cárdenas, the trio of Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, and Hesam Rahmanian, coming together to demand the same amount of importance on a shared platform.
I must confess, the argument that virtual exhibitions are trying to detach us, the viewers, from reality and projecting us into an unknown, alternate reality does not make much sense to me. Does standing in a museum space or a gallery space not have the same effect? Existing in the face of art is travelling back in time, adventuring into the future, being transported into an alternate dimension and immersing into an alternative reality. So, does it matter so greatly if the experience is conducted virtually where many more can have the experience than in-person? Perhaps, “art” has been stuck in its own ways for too long. “Art” has been stuck in the past for so long that with every inch forward in time, the true purpose of “art” starts to look more and more blurry. The NYUAD exhibition curators, Maya Allison and Heather Dewey-Hagborg expressed, “[...] digitally born art struggles in exhibition halls: as a non-object, it lives between the “object-ness” of the monitor and the “virtual-ness” of the digital artwork’s original form.” Like Michael Ann Holly makes clear in their book: it was never about the object, it has and always will be about how the objects make us feel. Although the feeling may be impacted significantly when witnessing the “object-ness” of art objects, feelings are also impacted when witnessing the “virtual-ness” of art. It would be criminal to take away the opportunity to feel a certain way.
The digital world and the virtual world have been a part of human life. I knew it and the art world knew it too. The difference is, I have been making my work available online and it took a pandemic to push the artworld to do what many creative personnel and I have already been doing. The NYUAD gallery writes, “the smartphone was already an extension of our bodies before the pandemic.” Technology and the virtual world are undeniably a part of our souls and bodies. The pandemic did not make the virtual world an extension of our bodies, it only emphasized the role virtual worlds play in our lives. As human beings, we just have a tendency to listen to the loudest voices in the crowd. I hope virtually curated exhibitions will remain loud even after the pandemic ends.
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