With Layla Burger-Lichtenstein, David Joselit, and Abbas Zahedi, moderated by Antonia Kölbl

“Don’t go for install. You’ll be braver if you don’t. 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 […]