Online Course THE HOME OF ART AND ART IN THE HOME: The Domestic as Public Space by Dagmara Genda

“Where is art’s home? Is it a gallery, a museum? Is it a project space or a private collection? Maybe a living room? The exhibition settings we know today are not as self-evident as they seem. The white cube gallery is only a post-World-War-II development and the museum has gone through many phases since its first public appearance in the late 1700s—and it’s still changing. Though institutions have a certain authority in legitimising particular practices as art, it is the underlying, subversive currents in semi-private spaces that challenge the status quo in every generation.

Domesticity has been often diminished for its assumedly “feminine” connotations, but it is perhaps the first place that art is made. These private spaces have been used as exhibition venues to evade censorship, as was the case in the U.S.S.R., curators have launched careers out of their kitchens, others have made abandoned homes into giant sculptures or used them as venues, yet others have designed homes for their afterlives or used domestic objects as their medium. The private living space has been used, time and time again, to challenge institutional gatekeeping and to engender a different, more intimate way, of approaching and looking at art.

“The Home of Art and Art in the Home” will in introduce participants to historical and contemporary examples of domestic spaces, both lived and abandoned, used as art and for art. Additionally, in a series of hands-on aesthetic challenges, participants will use their own homes as stage sets, artworks, and exhibition venues. The class will culminate in an online presentation that brings their private vision to a public platform.” (Text by courtesy of Dagmara Genda)