[Un]curated:
The decontextualised museum
My research investigates the power of modern museums in recontextualising and culturally displacing objects of traditional genesis. I critique the exhibition space, the curation of objects and the spatial practice of museums. My project explores an alternative museological spatial practice that is not informed by the ubiquitous Western canon we know today.
My investigation relies on using ceremonies associated with traditional objects, the practice of procession and the movement of the urban commuter as design drivers in proposing this alternative museum typology. I have chosen Johannesburg Park Station as my site of interest, given it serves as a significant transit hub in the inner city. My design capitalises on the dense urban movement across the site, coupled with drawing first principles of ceremony/ritual associated with the original use of traditional objects in designing an ‘anti-museum’ for my design proposition.
This new typology rejects containment and focuses on the everyday movements of urban life. I worked with structural grids symbolic of cartesian logics and countered them as gestures of rebellion with landscape systems. The proposition houses an artists’ residency, where curatorial duties are shared among a rotating group of contemporary artists, departing from the conventional containment and spectacle paradigm. Narratives are crafted by a rotating group of participants, free from a single, fixed agenda or narrative, creating a dynamic and evolving museum experience.
