Curators of fifty national pavilions at the Venice Architecture Biennale have come together to collaborate and share resources as part of the Curators Collective.
The newly-founded Curators Collective challenges the usual approach to the Venice Architecture Biennale, where participants develop pavilions in isolation in response to a shared theme.
Instead, the fifty members are working together and supporting each other through the sharing of resources, promotion of each others' work and a shared programme of events they have curated for the festival.
"This biennale was an opportunity to respond in a different way"
The collective was initiated by Hae-Won Shin, the curator of the South Korean pavilion, in response to the uncertainty faced by participants in the lead up to the festival. The event was due to begin on 23 May 2020 but was postponed until May 22 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Above: the Curators Collective logo. Top image: a virtual meeting with the group members
"No one knew what was going to happen to the biennale, whether anyone would ever get to see any of the exhibitions we had been working on," said Shin, acting as spokesperson for the collective.
"This biennale was an opportunity to respond in a different way, to pool resources, create collaborative projects, share information and support each other tangibly," she told Dezeen.
"Times have changed"
According to Shin, the collective is also a direct response to ...