“Brand” fART

Geetika Arora

Curation is an art, a process with its own flowing structure and an intended language. Geetika Arora questions the ‘curatorial’ practices followed as she argues for the correct definition of this relatively young science of art.

Staying in Baroda for quite some years now, I have followed most of the shows that happen here. Recently, I saw a show that is exhibited every year since some years now. The act of seeing motivates me much more than the act of reading so I am very excited when I go for a show. And whenever one is too excited about something there are two possible outcomes of it: one is that the thing that excites you in your imagination also satisfies you in reality and you come back with a renewed enthusiasm, the other is that the thing which excited you in your imagination disappoints you and as per Newton’s third law of motion, the degree of your (real) disappointment matches that of the (imagined) excitement. Baroda is known for nurturing some of the best artists in the country. So all the brands, hubs, group shows here are studded with locally available stars, which helps as a marketing strategy but I am doubtful about its work as a curation strategy. One can talk about some of the shown worksindividually but I find it difficult to respond to such exhibition as a whole.

So the question is, is curation about getting a bunch of friends together and puting up an exhibition? Or is it about bringing together artists sharing a commonality of place of birth and bring up or mother tongue? Without ignoring the fact that we are still new and naïve to the western concept of curation, I will try and point out the loop holes in the practice. The etymology of the word takes one back to the Roman times when it meant to take care (Latin word curare) of the bath houses. In medieval times, it designated the priest who cared for souls. Later, in the 18th century, it meant looking after collections of art and artifacts. In today’s time it means all this and much more. I will not discuss curation of museum collections or those that involve a single artist (latest works and retrospectives). I will concentrate only on curated group shows.