My Place or Yours? Cara Hagan, Guest Curator

My Place, or Yours? is an exploration into the politics and practice of collaborative work. The artists in this exhibition have all arrived here with the goal of making work together, from a distance. More specifically, the majority of the participants here have embarked on a journey through the philosophy and practice of “Artistic Surrogacy.”

Guest Curator’s Statement

Artistic Surrogacy is a method of sharing artistic concepts through performances, presentations, experiences and objects which are shared, i.e., one person’s (or several people’s ) ideas are placed in the hands of another (or a group) to be executed with care in the absence of the originator(s). While choreography is like this – where dancers are the vessel of the choreographer – Artistic Surrogacy is different, in that the work can take place between people of different training, different artistic genres, even. The goal of Artistic Surrogacy is to find creative ways of embodying and bringing to life ideas shared, with respect to differences in demographic, culture, training, geography, and lived experience of the collaborators. In essence, Artistic Surrogacy is a way of transmitting ideas across borders, across bodies, in ways that uphold the core values of the work, while leaving room for translational growth. 

At its core, Artistic Surrogacy is about access. Who has access to institutional spaces? Who has access to the capital necessary to create work? Who has access to the cultural capital it takes to be recognized in the art world? How can artists subvert the impact of institutional bias, geographical isolation, sexism, racism, ableism, geopolitics, distorted societal beliefs about value, economic imbalance, and a deteriorating environment due to ground and air travel, through their pursuits? Through their collaborations, female-identified, gender non-conforming, and queer brown, black, and white artists from various socio-economic backgrounds, who are inventors, storytellers, scholars, magic-makers, caretakers, chronically ill, disabled, able-bodied, formally and informally educated, institutionally recognized and unrecognized, traveled and untraveled, from our region, from across the United States, and the world, make the experience of the arts more democratic for themselves and their audiences.

– Cara Hagan, Guest Curator

Participating Artists

Writing Across the Curriculum

• Writing prompts for My Place or Yours? Cara Hagan, Guest Curator
• General writing prompts for the Museum Experience

Additional resources

• Ms. Cara Hagan – Faculty profile published by the Department of Theatre and Dance.
• Cara Hagan on Vimeo
• Dancer Cara Hagan delves deeper into movement and movies – Winston-Salem Journal, June 19, 2016.