“Curator” is a strange concept for most Chinese. In China, the word is often understood as its Chinese “equivalent” (Cezhanren) suggests—the one (ren) who plans (ce) the exhibition (zhan). However, the original meaning of “curator” as a borrowing word is never correctly conveyed in this translation.
With the coming of the information era, a globalized and networking society is also bringing tremendous changes in art, and the word “curator”, popular as it has already been, seems to gradually become fatigued. Its ever-changing connotation and denotation is a witness to the development of its concept under various contexts and in different logical categories of art.
In this issue, we will explore an “artist as curator” phenomenon. Such a concept has sparkled discussions in the art circles in recent years, which, however, fail to stage effective dialogues among individuals who engage themselves differently in art. In my opinion, “artist as curator” represents a more democratic way of artistic expression as well as a motivation to practice artistic autonomy – in an art world full of frameworks, artists’ autonomy aspiration may well be a showcase of what is intrinsic in contemporary art. Therefore, we have invited artists, professional curators, artist curators and art lovers into discussion, and adopted both inside and outside perspectives of the issue in question to illustrate what roles curators and artist curators are playing in the world of art today.
“策展人”對大多數中國人來說是一個陌生的概念，但源於中文的拆分組合后再進行理解的文字方式，大多被人理解為“策劃展覽的人”，然而“curator”這個舶來品的含義本源並沒有體現在“策展人”這個譯文當中。
隨著信息時代的到來，全球化和網絡化的社會也影響著藝術領域的巨大變革，“策展人”這個本來已經非常時髦的詞彙現在看來也逐漸顯現出疲態，其內涵和外延的不斷變化也反映出了“策展人”概念在不同語境和不同藝術邏輯範疇內的發展軌跡。
在這一期的雜誌當中，我們會和大家一起來探討“藝術家作為策展人”這樣一種現象，“藝術家策展人”概念在近年來已經在藝術界引起了不少的討論，但對於處在藝術領域不同層面的個體來說，很難形成一個有效的對話。在我看來，“藝術家策展人”所代表的是一種更民主的藝術傳達方式和實行藝術“自治”的一種驅動力，在即以框架聳立的藝術世界當中，藝術家們要求“自治”的願望未嘗不是當代藝術本源概念的一種體現。在這期雜誌中，我們邀請了藝術家、職業策展人、藝術家策展人以及很多藝術愛好者們一起參與到討論當中，從縱向和橫向的範疇來展現“策展”和“藝術家策展人”之於當下藝術世界的意義所在。
