“Don’t go for install. You’ll be braver if you don’t and it’s more work for everyone if you do. Trust the work, work the trust,” artist Ghislaine Leung noted in 2021, making explicit what applies to art exhibitions in general: they presuppose trust, which at the same time must be continuously established. Following the philosopher Martin Hartmann, the collective work around exhibitions which involved artists, curators, and critics can be understood as a practice of trust that is supported by a common goal and its value. According to Hartmann, only a consensus on the practical framework enables mutual trust. However, the current economic and political pressures on the exhibition sector are causing relied upon conventions to falter. From working conditions to political self-conceptions, hard-won achievements are once again being called into question. Trust Issues takes this as a starting point and discusses the reasons for the increasing loss of trust in the institutional structures that support exhibitions. At the same time, the theme of trust encourages us to take another core aspect of Leung’s practice seriously: to understand that “dependence is less the incarcerator than the liberator.” If we once again understand our interdependence in the process of exhibition making as a potential, we can negotiate how a common framework of practice can be built as a basis for trust despite different or even contradictory interests.

The panel discussion takes place in the exhibition Ghislaine Leung and extends on the themes discussed in TEXTE ZUR KUNST issue on “Exhibition Politics,” which looks at current constellations of the numerous politics that collide in the exhibition sector.

Program

Thursday, June 26, 2025

7 pm

Trust Issues. Exhibiting as a Practice of Trust

Discussion with Layla Burger-Lichtenstein (curator, n.b.k.), David Joselit (professor of art, film, and visual studies, Harvard University, Cambridge) and Abbas Zahedi (artist, London), moderated by Antonia Kölbl (editor-in-chief, TEXTE ZUR KUNST)

In English

8:30 pm

DJ set by DJ Bootlicker

A project by Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.) and TEXTE ZUR KUNST.

Free admission