Shani K. Parsons
Curator
Shani Khoo Parsons (she/her) is an independent curator, designer, mother, and founding director of Critical Distance Centre for Curators. With degrees in architecture and graphic design, she has pursued a transdisciplinary, process-driven practice within both independent and institutional contexts, producing an eclectic body of work ranging from intimate artist’s books to immersive exhibitions. Since 2013 she has collaboratively produced over 70 exhibitions with 350+ artists and guest curators at Critical Distance, and has simultaneously developed an experimental independent curatorial practice; in 2022 she received her masters in visual/curatorial studies from U of T. Key projects include Infinite Distance (accessible digital exhibition, transmediale), The Parkette Projects (public art exhibition, Gallery TPW), and The aleatory object (experimental collections-based exhibition, Art Museum at U of T).
Curatorial Statement
Looking back on over thirty years of a transdisciplinary creative practice that has always existed for me as an exploratory and emergent way of thinking, being and doing, I have come to understand that mine is a curatorial process driven by curiosity, wonder, and a critical orientation toward the unknown.
Through an intentional embrace of uncertainty, and pursuit of associative and improvisational approaches to research and presentation, I wish to propose a different kind of curatorial engagement with knowledge production, one that does not simply restate what is known or strive to demonstrate expertise in any conventional sense. This does not mean that knowledge won’t be produced or shared, but rather that the process will not be so constrained, to paraphrase Freud, by the “imposition of reason on the imagination.”
