Curatorial Justice is Narrative Change
Karim Ahmad, Curatorial Justice Project
As a writer and culture strategist, my personal mission is to work toward narrative change. I write stories for audiences because I want to shift public perspectives toward justice and change the way the world works. Sometimes the stories I tell are dreams, speculative worlds I aspire to live in one day. Muslim Futures, which I co-created with ten other Muslim writers, artists, and filmmakers falls into this category. It’s an anthology of stories set in a multiverse of radically aspirational futures for Muslims in America, designed to authentically represent Muslim values and depict a world where we have the conditions we deserve in order to thrive. At other times, as with the initial Restoring the Future report, I envision stories with other culture workers about a radically aspirational media arts system of the future. These visions are designed to incite passion and action to revolutionize the way that art and culture is produced, because I believe strongly that for the good of our culture, our communities, and society at large, we have a responsibility to prototype that future into being, and that the way in which culture is made or allowed to be made is also an act of narrative change. For example, when a storyteller is taught to engage responsibly with the community at the center of their story, the quality of that story improves, as does its ability to create a positive impact for these communities in the real world. Yet these qualitative improvements to storytelling cannot happen on a fieldwide basis without resourcing organizations to develop such frameworks for a more ethical praxis.
“I believe strongly that for the good of our culture, our communities, and society at large, we have a responsibility to prototype that future into being, and that the way in which culture is made or allowed to be made is also an act of narrative change.”
Unfortunately, there is a common school of thought in arts institutions that culture change lies solely in the hands of the artist, and that the institutions that support them are somehow apolitical and impartial. Here, I believe that the wise words of Desmond Tutu apply, in that “if you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” Indeed, I believe strongly that all of us, in every sector of this field, in every role, at every level, have the responsibility to shift public perceptions, to advance narrative change via the curatorial choices we all make. In other words, institutions must curate stories that are responsible to communities, especially those that are most marginalized by dominant cultures.
I often think about the responsibility of artists and culture makers to be intentional and values-forward with the work we put out into the world. The art we make has a real impact on shifting the hearts and minds and actions of others—this is well researched and documented. Thus, it is imperative that our creative work as artists embody our values, such that we are nudging the world in the way that feels good and right to us and those we seek to represent through our stories. This is why there is such a great degree of emphasis in our current cultural landscape about authorship and authenticity. Beyond reductive questions around who is “allowed” to tell what story, the bigger question an artist must ask themselves is how does that community want itself to be represented? And recognizing that no one individual can speak for an entire community, by what process is any artist potentially engaging with a community they might not belong to in order to gauge the authenticity of their story? Because representing the life and pain and trauma and dreams of another community to a potential audience of millions is a tremendous responsibility, whether one views it as such or not.
“Funders, curators, distributors, exhibitors, and all other forms of culture enablers — at any size — also bear a responsibility to consider and uphold the way in which a community desires to see itself represented onscreen. They are the gatekeepers between artist and audience.”
Similarly, funders, curators, distributors, exhibitors, and all other forms of culture enablers —at any size—also bear a responsibility to consider and uphold the way in which a community desires to see itself represented onscreen. They are the gatekeepers between artist and audience. They determined the size of the audience a story will reach, or whether it will meet an audience at all. Thus, when presented with an artist whose work does not demonstrate a respect for the responsibility of telling another community’s story accurately, the responsibility for vetting and potentially passing on that work falls to the curator. But only if that curator assumes that responsibility, or even knows such a responsibility exists. It’s a responsibility for which many of us in the field have different names.
I call it curatorial justice.
From left to right, Karim Ahmad, Jemma Desai, and Lucy Mukerjee at Curating the Future, a live session on curatorial justice at the 2023 European Film Market. Copyright © Angela Regenbrecht / EFM 2023.
Several organizations have codified practices in place to advance curatorial justice, such as BlackStar Film Festival, the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, the New Orleans Film Festival, Maoriland Film Festival, and others. Many more have organically incorporated a justice lens into their evaluation processes at every level. These lenses and practices operationalize values that are rooted in responsibility to community, and through the impact it yields has positioned these organizations as leaders in their communities. However, these practices are rarely shared, which I believe is a tremendous missed opportunity, because when we do not share the practical mechanisms by which we are operationalizing our values, we unintentionally silo the work of advancing curatorial justice, dramatically reducing our potential for impact.
“We could even organize as a network of values-aligned community-rooted institutions to apply pressure to reluctant predominantly White institutions and erode their resistance to progress-oriented curatorial practices. We might align ourselves with like minded philanthropic leaders to rebalance the way we resource community-forward organizations at the expense of legacy institutions.”
But, another way of working is a matter of choice. We can provide existing tools and frameworks for younger organizations to build off of what has been prototyped by those that have come before them. We can co-create shared frameworks for advancing curatorial justice fieldwide, alleviating the burden for every under-resourced organization and staff to develop these ways of working for themselves. We could even organize as a network of values-aligned community-rooted institutions to apply pressure to reluctant predominantly White institutions and erode their resistance to progress-oriented curatorial practices. We might align ourselves with like minded philanthropic leaders to rebalance the way we resource community-forward organizations at the expense of legacy institutions, or leverage relationships with individual distribution executives with a progressive mindset to decentralize sales markets across like-minded festivals to proliferate a more pluralist cultural marketplace. In a world such as this, justice centered organizations become better resourced as the leaders they are, and the communities they serve thrive accordingly - in their artistic careers and in the way that they are perceived by audiences worldwide, exactly as they wish to be seen, as they deserve to be seen.
Thus, it is through equitable curation and the co-creation of shared curatorial justice practices that we can model the kind of world that audiences want to and need to see. We hold the potential to model a world that is possible, and in many cases already exists, but is rarely seen. Put another way, through the stories we curate, we rebuild the world over and over and over again, and on a potentially massive scale - but only if we choose to. Because art either upholds or upends the status quo, but it never does both.
What is the world you will build through your curation of art and culture? I invite you to engage with and support the work of Restoring the Future’s Curatorial Justice Project as we continue to convene the field to gather, synthesize, and organize upon these present and future practices, in order to build the just and restorative pluralist culture and world that we all deserve.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Karim Ahmad (he/they) is a writer and culture strategist. He is the creator of Muslim Futures, a cross-platform anthology of stories set in radically aspirational Muslim futures, which has been supported by the Pop Culture Collaborative and Race Forward’s Butterfly Lab for Immigrant Narrative Strategy. He is the writer of the speculative fiction comic book, DIVIDE, and was the creator and showrunner of the groundbreaking science fiction series FUTURESTATES. He is also the founder of Restoring the Future, a network of culture workers who are using worldbuilding and industry organizing to build a more just and beautiful media arts system. Ahmad is a current OSF Soros Equality Fellow, a member of the Guild of Future Architects, and can be found on Twitter as @thatkarimahmad
