Camille Richard

Camille Richard is interested in conceptual and contextual art practices that act within the museum and reflect its governance system. In her research, she is focusing on the cases of artists Michael Asher, Thomas Hirschhorn, and Kapwani Kiwanga, who adopt a curatorial practice that she terms intrusive because they use the museum institution and its components as a medium: they create active contexts that enable them to reposition themselves in relation to the traditional concepts that define exhibition spaces. She addresses their practices through a historical lens, attempting to reveal the path taken by the artist–institution dynamic via the deployment, democratization, and decolonization of exhibition spaces and forms. She hypothesizes that by activating these approaches, Asher, Hirschhorn, and Kiwanga are participating in a reflection that nourishes not only their relationship with the institution and art history, but also that between the institution and its own operation and deeply rooted methods. Thus, the critical aspect of the projects that Richard is studying, subversive at first glance, is more a participant in the art system than opponent to it.

Richard’s approach, in which she analyzes and critiques institutional systems and addresses practices that are redefining the very notion of the exhibition, is situated in the field of curatorial studies. By studying these practices from this angle, she hopes to demonstrate how, through a research process that is intended not to set knowledge in stone but to be an exercise that puts knowledge in a new perspective, the exhibition can transcend a singular objective and be part of a reflective process.

During her residency, Richard tried to uncover the subterranean networks in the art world – that is, to define and then analyze what characterizes an exhibition and the agency of each actor participating in it, in order to reposition the relations of power that act in and are perpetuated by exhibitions.