The main solution to realize this cross-institutional and regular exhibition is to call for huge amount of museum and gallery workers (who are oppressed under the institution, has barely no chance to exhibit and curate even in their own institution) non-institutional or ex-institutional, to connect every individual worker’s social network into a huge network that affect the network upon it in the social construction due to the interpersonal relationship guided, but limited-in-scale range of museum/gallery industry. Museum/Gallery workers can use their own power to gain authorities of the instituitions they work. Meanwhile, museum/gallery workers build their new interpersonal and interinstitutional relationship through the exhibition
The exhibition has over 60 participants (who are museum/gallery workers from different institutions and all over China), 10 sub-exhibitions and 7 participated institions. Participants can freely submit their exhibition purposal to become a curator of a sub-exhibition in the series, selecting works from around 90 applicants (due to the space and institutions limitation, and the subjects of sub-exhibitions, the selection have to be competitive, but our principal is exhibit as much applicants’ works as we can based on the respect for the effort curators give for each exhibition).
The large number of participants in the exhibition is also mutually benificial for both staff and the institutions and the 1st session of Shanghai Museum/Gallery Staff Biennale received warm responses from both sides. Due to the uncertainty of Covid-19 in 2022-2023, the 2nd session is now preparing to be held at 2024, aiming to build a normalized regulatory power mechanism in the contemporary field.
Left: Initiate and open call poster; Right: Main exhibition poster.
“Painful Pain”, Hüten Gallery
“Absent / Present”, Shanghai Himalays Museum
Meta-Exhibition Module (scan the QR code, see the detail documents of the exhibition organization)
“No Space Junk”, Shanghai Himalays Museum
The Tale-Tell Heart, Hereon
“People”, Shanghai Jinchen YFM Art Gallery
“Rabbit Hole”, Arkila Art Center
“Mind The Gap”, Arkila Art Center
Public space for “The Rabbit Hole” and “Mind The Gap”
“An Afterparty”, SS Gallery
“Open Return”, JM Gallery
Exhibition Working Structure, from the left: the word of the first column: “Artists”, the second column: “curators”, the third (the single word): “Chief Curator”, the fourth column: “Exhibition Instituions And Staff”.