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Catalina Imizcoz

Cultural and Museum Studies, University of Leicester

Thesis title:

Modernity and the Exhibitionary Form

This PhD explores what I call ‘the exhibitionary form’ and posits that any exhibition’s design generates political, social and ontological affects. I argue that the modern exhibition’s form was designed in order to help further modernity’s conception of the world based on binary separation. The subject-object binary was not invented in an exhibition space, but the exhibition has been a vehicle through which it has settled into social culture. Surrounded by forms that respond to a particular understanding of reality, what we believe is possible becomes circumscribed to what the activation and usage of those forms permit. The aim of conceptualising exhibitionary forms is suffused by the hope that, by analysing them as micro-ontological agents, I might shed light on how modernity as a socio-cultural phenomenon is unraveling. I explore eight contemporary examples where the form and design digress from a modern agenda: I study these with the practitioners that helped create them and together, we tentatively shape the contours of what a different, more-than-modern exhibitionary form could be like. My research question has led me to conclude that in employing more-than-modern exhibitionary forms, society constructs and furthers more-than-modern worldviews, where so-called subjects and objects are indistinct and shapeshifting.

Research Area

  • Cultural and Museum Studies

Publications

‘El Pintor Gordín en el ICI’, Kunstlicht (Amsterdam, vol 38 no 3, 2017)


‘The Multiplex Texture of ramona’, Third Text (London, vol 30 issue 4, 2017)


‘Fieldwork: Extending the Study of the Exhibition Across Geographies’, Caiana. Revista de Historia del Arte y Cultura Visual (Buenos Aires, no 10, 2017)


‘Precarious Structures: HIV, Museums and History’, OnCurating: special issue edited by Theodore Kerr (Zürich, 2019)


‘ramona & Ovum: Two Latin-American Models’, Journal de l’Université d’Eté (Paris, Centre Pompidou, Bibliothèque Kandinsky, 2019)

‘The Publication as Evocation: Exhibition Histories’ Printed Matter’, The Exhibition: Histories, Practices and Politics. Revista de História da Arte (Lisbon, vol 14, 2019)


‘The Modern Paradigm and the Exhibitionary Form: The Case of Altermodern’, OnCurating issue 46: Contemporary Art Biennials – Our Hegemonic Machines in Times of Emergency (Zürich, 2020)


Conferences

‘Setting the Conditions of Display’ – Young Researchers Colloquium, Vrije Universiteit and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, February 2017

‘As Slowly as Possible’ – Symposium, Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present and Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, May 2018

‘Les sources au travail. Publications d’artistes: de l’atelier à la bibliothèque (et vice-versa)’ – Summer University, Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Centre Pompidou, Paris, July 2018

‘Grandes públicos y artes visuales de 1950 a nuestros días’ – Conference, Museo Reina Sofía and Universidad Complutense, Madrid, November 2018

‘Exhibiting (and) Histories’ – Workshop, Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History, Rome, December 2018 

‘What Do Exhibitions Do?’ – Conference, ASFA & Hydra 21: Exhibition Histories Seminar 1 – hosted by Asad Raza, September 2019