experimental curatorship . 2016-2017

Convinced as I am that art spaces are everywhere to be found and often just a few steps away from credibility, I noticed – or invented – the Miniature Museum of Upside Down Art in 2016 in its initial location: the ceiling of my former MFA studio in the V.A. Building of Concordia University. After some minor architectural adjustments, the museum was ready to be inaugurated in January 2017 and became an ideal place for adventurous artists to defy gravity and make the biggest artworks they had ever dreamed of, but on a small scale. Showing works and visiting gallery spaces at the MMUDA requires rotating and enlarging ideas as they evolve in our minds. It also involves looking at a type of art which does not seem like it was made for us. As its self-proclaimed director, I organised MMUDA exhibitions and special events and made papier maché miniature visitors to constitute a public. Other tasks involved hiring gardeners, architects and other experts to improve the museum’s appearance, printing and managing the museum’s currency (the Canadian Miniature Dollar — CAMD) and creating an upside down website. I also installed a camera system retransmitting several angles of each show on monitors, so that human sized people could see the artworks almost as if they were inside the museum. I eventually had to switch studio and left MMUDA’s vestiges behind. At some point in the future, I might find a new ceiling to continue MMUDA’s activities. Relying mostly on a little effort from the imagination, the MMUDA is always on the edge of disappearance. It can so easily be forgotten, overlooked, dismantled… How to adequately implement this peculiar, almost concealed institution into the physical world again? How can it be inserted in a chosen space’s everyday business? How can it manifest its importance while remaining unexpected?