UNCONTAINED
A curatorial theme at SILK
Silk Road Chapter 01 / Istanbul
Art has long been understood through its containers:
a painting belongs to a wall
a sculpture belongs to a pedestal
a photograph belongs to a frame
Even moving image, when it arrived, was eventually contained within the logic of a straight-wall projection.
And of course, there are the many art movements history has known: neoclassicism, romanticism, impressionism, symbolism, expressionism, cubism, and surrealism, just to name a few.
Fact is, everything could be boxed in. This was preferable because these formats gave artworks stability and legibility, allowing them to then circulate within established cultural and institutional systems – whether public or private.
Today however, art moves differently. Images travel continuously across the internet and on personal or public screens in places all over the world. They appear, are assessed, possibly transformed by editing, and can reappear in new contexts. They can gather audiences on large billboards or in intimate screening sessions, entering the physical space. They collect comments, generate new ideas, evolve in different environments, and create shared experiences throughout cultures. The artwork unfolds across formats and over time.
At SILK, we work within this condition and we call it
UNCONTAINED
UNCONTAINED describes a cultural reality in which artworks extend beyond a single format, location, moment, or way of display. A work may begin as a digital image and continue as a sculptural object, a live gathering, a publication, a film, or a spatial installation. Each form carries the work forward. Each form becomes part of its life.
This understanding shapes how we collaborate with artists.
Silk Road Chapter 02 / Bali
As an art house, SILK supports practices that move fluidly between digital and physical space. Together with our artists, we develop works that exist across media: from screen-based releases to exhibitions, from editions and objects to installations, films, and public activations. These expressions form a continuous body of work, where each manifestation contributes to a larger cultural presence.
The screen plays a central role in this process. It serves as a site of production, circulation, encounter, and community. Digitally native artists work with its visual language intuitively. They compose through sequencing, layering, looping, framing, and so forth. They build images that carry the logic of the screen, even when translated into physical materials. This creates a new cohesion between image and object.
Within UNCONTAINED, curation for us involves shaping the pathways through which a work moves and accumulates meaning. Exhibitions, events, screenings, and publications each create moments of encounter, and documentary practices preserve these moments and allow them to enter a longer cultural timeline. Through this continuous process, artworks develop context and presence.
This approach reflects SILK's role as both gallery and studio:
- We collaborate with artists to develop collections, exhibitions, collectibles and cross-media projects
- We produce physical works alongside digital releases
- We create environments where audiences gather
- We publish and document the ideas and processes that surround the work
Together, these activities form a cultural infrastructure that allows artworks to live fully in the world. UNCONTAINED serves as a guiding framework for this work.
It informs how we select artists.
It shapes how we develop projects.
It defines how works evolve over time.
Through UNCONTAINED, SILK supports artistic practices that reflect the conditions of contemporary culture: networked, spatial, material, and lived.
Because we see it like this
→ Art expands across formats
→ Art gathers people
→ Art accumulates experience
This is where we feel artworks find their full form.