Exhibition: An Institute Within An Institute

This international exhibition was the fourth part of the Franke/Herro Design Series, which highlights the work of important emerging talent through yearly exhibitions in the Art Institute of Chicago, one of the most reputable art institutions in the world, with over 1.5 million visitors a year. The first two installations featured works of Max Lamb and Christien Meindertsma, whereas for the third, The Ambiguous Standards Institute received an official invitation from the museum board and a budget over fifty thousand USD. The Ambiguous Standards Institute (ASI), a research-based design project, which I co-founded with Cansu Cürgen, in 2014, investigates the pervasive influence of standards on our daily lives. Our research explores the intricate web of standards embedded in everyday objects and interactions, shedding light on conventional [absolute] and ambiguous standards. After seven years of research, published and publicised through a book, several national and international exhibitions, radio programmes and public talks, the corpus of ASI’s work was internationally acknowledged and physically manifested in a solo exhibition. The exhibition “An Institute Within an Institute”, which was a research project in itself, at the Art Institute Chicago showcased ASI’s seminal research through ten case studies/artworks [of time, food, travel, protest, diagnosis, electricity, specification, gestures, tune and portion] meticulously displayed in identical wooden crates. Through agitprop posters, an orientation video, and archival research projections, the exhibition invited audiences to critically engage with the implications of standardisation in shaping our lived experiences. This exhibition represents the culmination of our interdisciplinary research, demonstrating the intersection of our research and design practice with art, history, and culture on an international platform. Several artworks from this exhibition were acquired by the Art Institute of Chicago and now are in their permanent collection.