Starting from the perspective of my potential audience, I recognize that engaging with my work requires creating accessible yet thought-provoking entry points. My exhibition, Crossroads of Belonging. Food. Temporarily. Art, is designed to foster conversations about identity, temporality, and cultural exchange. To ensure this dialogue happens, I aim to test out a range of interventions and methods of engagement that resonate with diverse audiences while challenging their perspectives.
Strategies for Interventions and Conversations
Placement and Spatial Context. Positioning the exhibition in a restaurant is an intentional intervention. This unconventional setting challenges the separation of art from everyday life and encourages audiences to reflect on how food connects to identity and temporality.
I plan to map the exhibition rooms (entrance hall, dining room, living room) to mirror my personal journey across Russia, Brazil, China, and Germany, creating an emotional and geographical narrative. The spatial transitions will guide viewers through different layers of identity, memory, and belonging.
Interactive Elements. I will incorporate prompts or installations that invite audience participation, for example, such as a "memory recipe" station where visitors can share dishes tied to their identity and heritage. This will connect directly to the exhibition's themes of temporality and belonging.
Curious Conversations. My plan is to organize artist talks and discussions, as an idea perhaps even during dining experiences. Inspired by Lee Mingwei’s The Dining Project, I plan to explore how shared meals can create intimacy and foster dialogue.
Drawing from Hans Ulrich Obrist’s Do It project, I could experiment with audience instructions, asking them to interpret aspects of the exhibition through their own lens, creating a localized response to the work.
Documentation and Recording Methods
To ensure the process of intervention and engagement is well-documented, I will expand my existing methods and integrate new approaches:
1. Visual Documentation
o Use still photography to capture the atmosphere of each space and the audience's interactions with the work.
o Record short video clips that focus on the progression of the audience's journey through the exhibition, highlighting moments of curiosity or reflection.
2. Audio-Visual Storytelling
o Capture audio snippets of conversations or reflections from participants during artist talks or interactive sessions.
o Experiment with short, performative videos where I explain the concepts behind specific works or reflect on the process of building the exhibition.
3. Writing as Documentation
o Maintain a reflective journal to document the progression of ideas, audience responses, and how the interventions evolve.
Ways of Curating. 2016 Author: Hans Ulrich Obrist [online] At: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374535698/waysofcurating/ (Accessed 18.01.2025)
o Inspired by Obrist’s Ways of Curating, I will write about how the act of curating this exhibition within a restaurant reshapes the audience’s perception of art and identity.
4. Performative Strategies
o Test live interventions, such as guiding the audience through the space or performing actions tied to the artwork’s themes (e.g., a gesture symbolising the transition between cultural contexts).
o Record and analyse these performative elements to understand their impact on audience engagement.
Reflection on Process and Outcomes
Through testing these strategies, I anticipate learning how my work connects with audiences and how the unconventional setting of a restaurant influences their experience. The process of documentation will help me refine the narrative of Crossroads of Belonging and ensure that the interplay between food, art, and temporality is effectively conveyed.
Drawing inspiration from the Do It project, I will also reflect on how localised responses add richness and diversity to the exhibition's meaning. The interplay between planned interventions and organic audience reactions will reveal how cultural and emotional connections are built through art.
By carefully documenting these interactions, I aim to create a lasting archive that not only informs my future practice but also serves as a resource for fostering broader conversations about identity, migration, and belonging.
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