The second seminar of 2020 DOOSAN Curator Workshop looked at the subject of commissioned curating with Jiyeon Kim, the director of d/p. In commissioned curating, the direction of the exhibition is often already predetermined to a degree, or involves various interests. By looking at specific cases, this seminar explored what role the curator should or can play in a situation with such limitations.

The first example was Haein Art Project (2013), which began while searching for ways to continuously invite people to Haeinsa Temple and to receive monetary funding and support from the government and local authorities. When Kim took charge of the project, ‘heart’ was already set as the subject of the project. There were also spatial limitations in which permission from the government and local authorities like Cultural Heritage Administration had to be received to install the works. What was important in such situation was for Kim to flexibly accommodate the demands of the various people involved in the project, while compromising what she wanted as the organizer.

In similar context, Changwon Sculpture Biennale 2014 and Jeju Biennale 2017 required many aspects to be considered as much as they were region-specific projects. Jeju Biennale 2017 was particularly impressive in that the biennale prioritized its goals to be an environmentally-friendly and sustainable project that made numerous attempts to find its own directions in the future, rather than being a spectacle of works by famous international artists from abroad. Kim’s attempt to activate the regional characteristics of Jejudo through Jeju Biennale was an experience through which the gap between an independent curator’s ideals and that of the government and other personnel involved could clearly be felt.

Based on such experiences, Kim has been directing the curator-centered space d/p (2018-) in Nakwon Plaza. The diverse exhibitions and programs at d/p are organized focusing on the collective thoughts on the ‘role of the curator’, and places its main emphasis in exploring the contemporaneity in between the exhibitions.