Students of the MUN's Master's Degree in Curatorial Studies put themselves in the artist's shoes with Daniel Canogar

The students of the Master's Degree in Curatorial Studies of the Museo Universidad de Navarra had the opportunity to work from the perspective of the creator thanks to the workshop given by the artist Daniel Canogar from April 21 to 24.

As Canogar explains, the objective of the proposal, which closes the course The Curator and the Artist, is for students "to put themselves in the artist's shoes, to see their profession from the point of view of creation. I think there is a tendency to excessively separate curators from artists, when, in my experience, it is a much more dynamic and fluid relationship. Many times curators can be as much artists as the artists themselves, and we artists also have to be a little bit curators of our work". In this sense, he values that this proposal "generates an interesting dialogue with the students, who have to create works of art during the workshop, collective projects that we then analyze".

This being the fourth year that he has taught the workshop, he says that the methodology he follows is not invariable and rigid, but has been changing for 25 years: "I propose a critical spirit so as not to see the work as an end point but as a mediation to talk about many issues".

To activate the creative seed that he believes every graduate student carries inside, each day a different theme was proposed: "We worked on ruin, allegory, algorithmic reality... As the topic of artificial intelligence is very present right now, I was interested in knowing how they processed it".

For Pilar Romero, a 45-year-old Galician architect, "the workshop has been another window of inspiration and motivation within this master's degree. It has been very enriching to learn first-hand about Daniel's experience and to have his help and empathy, and the exercises he has proposed have been a challenge since most of us are not artists, but we have put our creativity into practice from the first day and it has given rise to very original and interesting interventions".

Fellow artist Jaydee Raquel Rodríguez, a 24-year-old Puerto Rican with a degree in Fine Arts, describes the experience as "cathartic": "It was a gradual process in crescendo, which led us to put ourselves in the shoes of the artist and, through the adoption of this position, allowed us to work on our emotions, thoughts and ideas. We delved into a new level of creativity, which helped us and will help us in the future in our steps as curators in process. I take the permission to speak in plural since, in the conversations with the colleagues of the master's degree, which arose after the workshop, we pointed out the same feeling. We agreed that it was an enriching and, above all, healing process where each one of us faced our fears".    

Each course, the workshop ends with a presentation of projects by groups, of which Canogar highlights the "miracle" that is to see how in such a short time such profound artistic projects come out: "Sometimes I see things in these workshops that are more interesting than in museums. For me this is very gratifying and interesting, and I learn a lot.