Did You Go?
46th Annual Gail Silver Memorial Lecture—Future Possibilities in Contemporary Art
Nino Chambers
→MFA FD 2025
v.1 wants to know, "Did you go?" Every week RISD hosts amazing guest lectures, panel discussions, and exhibition openings. Some people go, many don't, and in the blink of an eye, it's over! "Did You Go?" is a chance to quickly mark and share our encounters with speakers, shows, and such, on campus, in Providence, elsewhere. Submit a reflection, a resonant quote, a question you wish she asked, a new line of though, a sketch. Be sure to note the speaker or event and date and place—eds.
October 23rd was one of those days in the studio—the kind where nothing seems to go right. I was looking forward to a rare, uneventful evening at home when a sandwich board caught my eye with the headline: “Future Possibilities in Contemporary Art.” Reading further, the words curatorial process piqued my interest. I snapped a picture and texted it to my event pal. He replied, “I’m going!”, and I decided on my evening plans with “see you there.”
Screenshot of text thread, October 23, 2024. Courtesy the author.
Curating is a tough job, so it's unsurprising it requires a mammoth amount of work to organize a show at the scale of the Biennial. In the evening’s conversation, I was struck by the level of concern Chrissie and Meg had in selecting the artists despite the enormity of the task. They aptly spoke about the role and responsibility of curation in our current climate—to platform artists speaking to contemporary issues, kindling a new way of thinking. The work responded to the question of artificial intelligence destabilizing “what is real” and the long history of marginalized groups deemed subhuman, as “less than real.” The co-curators’ approach to studio visits, a hallmark of the selection process, focused on truly deep listening. During the short one-year preparation period, they visited over 200 artists, all of whom had never before featured in a Biennial, with the goal of finding their thematic approach organically, through quality time with the artists. The result was a “dissonant chorus” of 71 diverse contemporary voices, artists from the States and otherwise, speaking to what feels real to them in 2024.
It’s a shame I didn’t get to experience the timely work of Chrissie and Meg—especially regrettable considering I was in NYC for almost three weeks while the show was running. But their talk was an excellent insight into the minds of two powerhouse curators and their process of staging the biennial survey. A memorable line from Chrissie Iles was “there’s a reason shows are called shows,” pointing to the inherent theatricality and ephemeral nature of an exhibition. Although I missed the Biennial, which closed in August, the evening was an unexpected consolation, almost better than the real thing. Jokes aside, I’m glad I didn’t miss the talk and have already ordered the duo’s catalog, where the show lives on.
Nino Chambers wants to see more exhibitions.