These curatorial frameworks represent ongoing research and collaborative inquiries into the structures of identity, memory, and the archive. Full curatorial dossiers and floor plans for these projects are available upon request.
CONDITIONS FOR BECOMING
“The self is not a self without the address of the Other.”
Judith Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself
Judith Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself
This exhibition examines identity as a process of persistent negotiation, focusing on how the Bay Area’s history of migration and social friction forces a continuous reshaping of the self. The project investigates the "opacity" of the individual—the parts of a history that remain private or untranslatable even under the pressure of daily social contact.
Prioritizing an intimate scale, the gallery is designed as a dialogue between large-scale portraiture and tactile, small-scale objects. Viewers navigate the space as participants in a social script, moving between the direct gaze of the paintings and the dense material evidence of personal history. This spatial choreography emphasizes the vulnerability required to stay in a state of becoming.
Artists: Terry Acebo Davis, Natalia Drachinskaya, Anna Feldman, Maria Kazanskaya
UNSTABLE ARCHIVES
Unstable Archives investigates the breakdown of memory through the lens of material decay and digital mediation, treating the archive as a site of failure rather than preservation. While the focus remains on the human face in other inquiries, this project looks at what remains when the person is absent. It considers how memory leaves residue in the "waste" of systems, from physical medical fragments to generated digital voices.
The project is conceived as a media-heavy, immersive installation that uses sound and light to create a sense of environmental instability. The layout forces the viewer to confront "hyperobjects"—elements too complex to be fully seen or categorized. This work marks a shift toward using technological logic to document its own inability to hold a human narrative, leaving the archive as a site of perpetual unfolding.
Artists: Maria Ansh, Aissulu Kadyrzhanova, Anna Feldman, Vadim Mirgorodskii, Sasha Zhitneva
