Metaphysics for the Curatorial

This book is a philosophical investigation of the concept of curation and its significance to the field of aesthetics. The author, as an artist-philosopher, is concerned with what contemporary curatorial work can offer to philosophical discourse. In the attempt to understand how things are curated and what the activity of curation does to curated ‘things’, the author puts forward an aesthetic and metaphysical argument for the practice, significant to the philosophical community.

The book looks at the ways in which the systems of curation overrides its conventional definitions and examines its implications to our experiential engagement with the world and its ‘thing-making’ processes. A systemic theory of curatorial objects made from intentional relations becomes the beginning of constructing this possible metaphysics which curatorial work can offer us. An ontology of relations is at the heart of this metaphysics. It also demonstrates the possibilities of the curatorial when philosophised from the Global South, bringing together theory and praxis.

A philosophically-rigorous exploration of curatorial practice, this book will be useful for scholars and researchers of curatorial practice, philosophy, phenomenological aesthetics, systems studies, museum studies, multimodal arts practices, archives, exhibition-making, studies in creativity and perception. It will also be useful to general readers interested in phenomenology, metaphysics and contemporary aesthetics.

Srajana Kaikini is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at School of Interwoven Arts and Sciences, Krea University, India where she teaches topics in aesthetics, metaphysics, phenomenology, curatorial studies, and transdisciplinary philosophy. She is also a poet, artist, essayist and curator with more than a decade of work spanning several exhibitions, projects, residencies and fellowships globally. Her book of poems The Night the Writing Fell Silent (PAG, 2023) was longlisted for the Oxford Art Book Prize (2024). She is Associate Editor of the Encyclopedia of the Anthropocene: Pluriversal Perspectives (Springer Nature, 2024-2026) and was the recipient of the IFA-Museums and Archives Research Grant (2023-2024).