Ronald Kolb
Post-Exhibitionary Practice

After-Diploma Event, MAS Creative Practice, ZHdK
18 June 2025, PhotoBastei, Zurich
Curated by Ronald Kolb

How can curatorial research be encountered not only through presentations and texts, but through collective action? Developed by Ronald Kolb with six graduates of the MAS Art & Design at Zurich University of the Arts, A Salon with Six Exercises on People-Centered Curating transformed PhotoBastei into a timed participatory exhibition.

Six choreographed encounters activated objects, thoughts and bodies. Drawing on the graduating projects of Evgeniia Dietner, Erika Garcia, Mary Lilith Fischer, Lynn Guo, Zahira Mozafari and Lara Maria Sutter, the exercises addressed cultural identity, contested narratives, empathy, happiness, everyday care and multisensory exhibition-making.

Visitors were invited to read, listen, remember, move, exchange objects and collectively relabel familiar things. Rather than presenting people-centred curating as a theoretical concept, the salon enacted it as an embodied and relational practice shaped through participation.

An apéro, open bar and DJ set by ivi&gio extended the exhibition into an informal social space for conversation, gathering and celebration.