exhibiting the city
a research thesis

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At all times, the city has stimulated the imagination and fascinated people. The multiplicity of viewpoints that have been expressed over the centuries, lead it up to become today, among other things, an exhibition object.
This research intends to fit in the field of curatorial studies. As an introduction to the case studies, the thesis lays the outline of the city-related exhibition ‘genre’. Thus, it provides a brief history of it in the last thirty years, and tries to draw up flexible typology, with approaches ranging from :
- the iconography and the imaginary of the city (ex : Dreamlands. Des parcs d’attraction aux cités du futur, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2010)
- the architecture (ex : Tel Aviv, the white city, MAXXI, Rome, 2018)
- the art scenes inside cities (ex : My Winnipeg, La maison rouge, Paris, 2011).
- a specific city as the active subject (ex : Istanbul. Passion, joy, fury, MAXXI, Rome, 2015

Exhibiting the city examines the curatorial decisions of two city-related exhibitions Istanbul: Passion, joy, fury (Hou Hanru, Ceren Erden, Elena Motisi, Donatella Saroli, 2015) and Home Beirut. Sounding the neighbors (Hou Hanru, Giulia Ferracci, 2017) at the MAXXI in Rome. Several other shows have been mentioned in order to make comparisons in the very conception of the exhibitions (ex : other shows about Istanbul).

The MAXXI exhibitions stand out because they approach the subject of the city through architectural and urbanistic issues, and both of Istanbul and Beirut have a very interesting urban planning history and contemporary matters. In the show, Istanbul is introduced with the Gezi Park protests (against an urban plan of rebuilding the ottoman style Taksim Military Barracks, implying the destruction of the park), which preoccupied a lot of artists.
On the other hand, the show about Beirut made visible how artists reacted to the destruction of the city during the war, and the reconstruction in its aftermath. Therefore, most of the people exhibiting wear several hats : not only are they artists, but also architect, urbanist, urban researcher, sociologist, or all at the time. And consequently the works on view were sometimes a mixture of all of those disciplines. This thesis questions the curatorial choices in terms of artists, artworks corpus, textual content, chapters and scenography. The political dimension standing out in those exhibitions also raises the question of the role of the curator, and curatorial activism.
Moreover, organizing shows about Istanbul and Beirut in Europe necessarily interrogates the concern of orientalism, and it appeared that the curatorial vision was oriented by the post-colonial studies. It seemed to render a anti-orientalist image of the cities, particularly by referring to them through less usual topics ; by deconstructing the collective imaginary image ; by providing a polyphonic discourse – among the catalogue associates, among the artists in view – and not an identitary one.
Through the study of some of the artwork on display, the porosity between visual art and urbanism has been highlighted : how the artists express the urban condition of a city through their practice ? How are they involved in the urban life ? These are some of the questions raised in this thesis.