Helena Lugo: 

I believe all the works in the exhibition has a very poetic gaze. The discussion of the decisions we made behind the scenes will be more interesting to look at:

For example, why are all the artists female? Why did we make this decision? Why did we change the name of the exhibition?

Daniela Ruiz Moreno:

When the pandemic started, we had to postpone the exhibition, as it was originally scheduled to open in 2020 but was delayed until 2023. So, we decided to completely change the concept or think more deeply about what travel actual means, what mobility really is.

After that, Helena proposed the concept of "Suspension of Disbelief," which was very important for us and made us reconsider throughout the entire exhibition.

Helena Lugo: 

The title is like the key moment of reading the entire exhibition. "Suspension of Disbelief" is actually a term invented by a British poet in the early 19th century. It's a very special moment when people emotionally immerse themselves into a narrative. You know it's not real, but you just believe it, like when you start crying while watching a movie, you know it's made up, but you temporarily decide to participate in it. That's what we really want to depict in the exhibition.

It's more about engaging in another kind of escape, through spectacular creations and narratives, to pause the crisis the world is currently in. We believe it's important to create such moments, where we can also open ourselves to the unknown.

Daniela Ruiz Moreno:

I would like to continue with this point. I can talk about a close collaborator of artist Florencia Rodríguez Giles, and her project "Sensitive and Vindictive." She created all these stories, by working for a whole year in a community of neurodiverse individuals. During this process, she also began to decide the person who could be seen in the murals.

In this process, she became a mother, so she created this mural in a way similar to what she calls "collective birth." It's filled with different characters, some more threatening, or people can see pain in them. This work is not only about presenting fantasies and presenting these surreal landscapes, but it also about making us think about what has changed in our context?

Sensitive and Vindictive

Nora Turrado always uses this copy-and-paste method to find phrases in social media and advertisements; she doesn't create any new phrases but rather extracts them from the media we consume. Because of this phrase "something big is about to happen," it creates a certain level of anticipation for what will be presented in the exhibition.

Helena Lugo:

I've collaborated with Hima for a while, and she is full of poetry. She has a very poetic understanding of the post-human world and the pre-human world and how they are interconnected, through sound, metaphor, language, so I think her piece "Radar Level" is a very beautiful work. Time is cyclical, endless, but also contain certain hopes; it's somewhat like the end of the world, yet it retains the possibility of returning to the world itself.

Daniela Ruiz Moreno:

I think Agnes Meyer-Brandis aims to engage in a dialogue between the poetic possibilities found in literature and her ongoing scientific-biological poetic research in her work "The Moon Goose Colony." The entire piece remind us that these impossible stuffs, such as flying to the moon or creating the first utopian society, often originate from novels, literature, and art rather than solely from science. I find this perspective quite valuable: every possibility in our technological world begins with literature and fiction.

The Moon Goose Colony

Gu Ling:

The artwork "Thinking Like an Island" is an exercise in poetry writing, but when you transform it into an installation on the wall, how do you describe its size and color? How do you understand the difference between graphic poetry in books and graphic poetry on the wall?

Helena Lugo:

I think we don’t know. I think it's a leap of faith in our confidence in the institution. I think during this curatorial process, we must trust TANK Shanghai, and TANK Shanghai has to trust us as well. We believe that the Chinese translation of this poem conveys the same message as the original English text.

Gwendoline Cho-ning Kam:

I'd like to take a brief look back to the artwork "The Moon Goose Colony”. I'm just wondering if the artist encountered or considered any ethical issues regarding how to intervene in the lives or habitats of the geese in this context?

Helena Lugo:

To be honest, I'm not sure. But if I remember correctly, this is a work from 2012. I believe this is a work from ten years ago. Many things and issues have become so acute in the past decade. But I also think there's something poetic about it because we now have many dialogues about interspecies communication, so I wonder if she could possibly be their mother in some way, or nurture and communicate with them? Isn't that powerful?

Daniela Ruiz Moreno:

I think this also opens the concept of collaboration—collaborating with other species to create artworks, which is also a topic we often discuss in 2023, but the discussion about this topic was not as prevalent back in 2012.

Daniela Ruiz Moreno:

I'd like to talk about the work of Lea Guldditte Hestelund. Her piece is called "Carriers Series". The idea of carrying different identities is part of the work. At the meantime, she also thinks about some "carriers" that look more like superhero masks, things we carry that are our professions, our jobs, and also what we bear. The final addition to the work is a piece called "W.W.(Womb Wear)," where she reflects on how women's bodies become carriers for another human being. But this piece is also something like a shell, offering protection. She mentions that it's like a superhero's closet, or the closet of some characters you don't see.

Carriers Series

Yuan Fuca:

I like this piece artwork because I was just thinking the clothing and material concept. Its shape or structure make it look like a real suitable body, or even is a restrained body. But it should help you to complete certain mission by using certain type of ways. However, when it presents as a single object, it feels quite amazing.

● About the exhibition space design

Li Jia:

I’m curious about the way how you design the space. How did four of you curators collaborate with the designer? How did you peruse this concept, also how did you present all these ideas in the exhibition space?

Daniela Ruiz Moreno:

I believe this is primarily related to materialism—such as what works we can bring from the countries where these artists are based to Shanghai, as curators always work under very limited or very particular conditions, which are about a space and also about a budget. But in these respects, I think one thing we really like is our inclusion of Tai Shani's "Tragodia," where through the virtual reality of this piece, it has become not just a situation within the gallery space but more like having an entrance to another space, where you can enter and have a more immersive experience.

Helena Lugo:

I just want to add up that curation is not just about what you want, but also about how you consult with each condition that you have. In this sense, we have changed spaces several times, and we have had to renegotiate with the artists, and negotiate about the budget.

We visited TANK Shanghai four years ago, only once, and we haven't been back since. We've just been looking at the space through blueprints. When you're curating an exhibition for a space you haven't been to, it's a very fulfilling process, and this remote curation certainly has some impact on the overall look of the space, as Daniela mentioned, how we negotiate with the artists we want to showcase and with the entire space.

Daniela Ruiz Moreno:

The exhibition designer played a practical role throughout the entire process, and we received a lot of suggestions from Kong and Director Qiao, such as including a work by the Chinese artist Song Kun.

We are also open to continued collaboration with the museum because as curators, when you work with an institution once, that institution has the greatest understanding of the space and the methods. For us, we must work in this ongoing collaboration and fully trust their expertise.

  Soulmate (Androgynous) and No Boundary