Artists Don’t Need Our Permission

The art world has an odd habit of waiting to be chosen.

Apply for the residency. Hope you get in. Find a gallery. Get noticed by a curator. Win the grant. Get invited to the exhibition. Meet someone who knows someone. None of these things is bad. Artists need opportunities, and many good things begin with someone opening a door. The challenge comes when being chosen starts to feel like validation of your work.

I have been thinking about this recently in my role as adviser to Studio 88. It is an artist residency. Artists apply, and we select some of them. We can’t take everyone. We have limited rooms and resources, and our programmes have particular interests.

But selecting an artist does not make that artist legitimate. They did not need our permission before they arrived, and they don’t need it after they leave.

So what are we actually here for?

Part of the answer, I think, is simply to create the conditions for things to happen. An artist comes to Doi Saket and has time to work. They meet another artist over breakfast. Someone introduces them to a local craftsperson. They talk with a curator, a musician, a researcher, a neighbour. They wander somewhere they hadn’t planned to go. Something they see or hear makes its way into the work.

Or perhaps none of this happens. They spend three weeks working meditatively. That is fine too; not everything has to produce an outcome.

What is interesting is what can happen when a residency is loose enough for unexpected relationships to form. An independent residency like Studio 88 is especially good at this.

Being small has its advantages. There aren’t many layers between people. An artist can meet someone, have a conversation and see where it goes. Things can happen without becoming a programme first.

This is also why secluded + connected has become important to how we think about Studio 88. The secluded part is obvious. Artists need space. Sometimes they need to get away from the noise surrounding their practice and just work. The connected part might be another artist, the local community, Chiang Mai, a curator, another discipline, someone who becomes a collaborator later.

We don’t necessarily know which connection will matter. Probably most won’t. One might.

Artists need to be careful about depending too heavily on one gallery, curator, institution or residency. These relationships can be enormously valuable, but no single one should be holding everything up.

An artistic life is rarely that tidy anyway. It grows through people, conversations, work, unexpected introductions and things that only make sense years later. And that is what Studio 88 is: a space for artists to work, connecting people and ideas.

There isn’t one art world waiting for artists to break into. There are many.

It isn’t for us to decide where an artist belongs.

Artists don’t need our permission.

And sometimes, they make their own worlds.

Opinion piece by Wong Koi Hin. Koi Hin is Studio 88’s Strategic Adviser with a non-executive role. More information about the Studio 88’s team here.