I’ve always been interested in art spaces and how they dictate how we behave inside them — solid painted walls with artworks on display spaced arms-reach apart signify quiet, introspective, calm. We walk along following the direction of the art in thought, alone. If we visit a gallery with someone else, we meet in the middle pointing to something we find interesting, we say “I get this,” “I know what this is trying to say,” and we stand in the moment. But when an art exhibition is placed somewhere else, everything we thought we knew about how to behave is lost.
I remember seeing an art exhibition in a space that had never been used to display art before: a section of a cafeteria/study area in the university athletic centre. I can’t even quite remember what the exhibition was about but I remember the response to it — people didn’t get it. They wanted it gone because to them it disrupted the space and took up room that could have been used for study space or conversations at tables with friends. The comments in the welcome book were awful and rude. I remember questioning what the purpose was to this “experiment” — if the goal truly was to just see how people would react when their public space was disrupted by another message.
When we enter an art gallery we know what the social protocol is — to remain quiet and contemplative while we view the art around us. When art is placed in another space that is out of the ordinary, the social protocols are lost and people don’t know how to react, and often what comes out of that lack of knowledge is frustration. Most often when we don’t know, we want to know, and if we still don’t, we are annoyed at that fact.
The thing with pushing those boundaries in art sometimes is that people won’t get it and it won’t be well received because people don’t understand how they ‘should’ be reacting. When really, there are no ‘shoulds’ — people are always going to interpret things differently but that doesn’t mean we should keep the messages secret even if it’s to be placed somewhere outside of those solid painted walls. Art will always attract those who want to see it, and if it’s negatively received people will remember it still. So let’s display art anywhere and everywhere.
With continued lockdowns, we have to find new ways to share and display art. If we can’t share it in an art gallery because galleries are closed — let’s share it in new spaces that are unconventional. Let’s continue to experiment, and see what happens.
