Notes from an Art Worker: Exhibition openings are a ritual we no longer understand

The writer is the Director of Bangkok Art and Culture Centre and a curator-historian.

I have often found exhibition openings to be somewhat lonely and disconnected places.

This may sound melancholic coming from someone who has spent most of their working life attending them. I have been to more openings than I can properly remember. Some were genuinely moving, some felt culturally important. Others felt suspiciously similar to one another, as though contemporary art had quietly invented its own version of an airport lounge: white walls, expensive shoes, and low-level anxiety.

Loneliness functions differently now than it once did. It no longer necessarily arises from physical isolation. In fact, it often becomes most visible in crowded spaces, particularly those where everyone is acting some version of themselves and exhibition openings are full of these performances. Not a theatrical performance, though occasionally there is that too, usually involving some kind of live interpretive sound performance while the audience pretends not to be afraid of interacting incorrectly. I mean social performance; professional performance. The obvious choreography of appearing culturally engaged, socially comfortable, intellectually informed, and emotionally balanced, while internally calculating whether you still have enough social energy for another conversation about curatorial choices. Perhaps this is why crowded loneliness feels so existential. It reveals something we often forget: proximity and connection are not remotely the same thing.

We are constantly near one another now. Near colleagues, audiences, acquaintances, and strangers online. We know what people ate for breakfast, where they travelled last month, and occasionally the intimate details of their emotional lives. Yet knowing about people is not the same as being known by them.

Somewhere along the way, identity itself became a form of work. You are no longer simply a person attending an exhibition. You are also your own archivist, publicist, communications department, and social documentarian. You maintain an ongoing public narrative of yourself while simultaneously attempting to live an actual life beneath it.

Naturally, this becomes tiring. The art world intensifies the condition because so much of one's identity gradually folds into one's work. Conversations begin with institutions, exhibitions, projects, titles, and affiliations. After enough years, it becomes difficult to separate who you are from what you do. You stop being a person and become a small travelling biography of your own cultural productivity.

I suspect many people working in the arts quietly struggle with this, particularly those who entered the field because they genuinely loved art before it became labour. At some point, your social, intellectual, emotional, and professional lives begin occupying the same rooms. The boundaries dissolve almost completely. The people you encounter at openings are simultaneously colleagues, friends, collaborators, sources of emotional support, professional competitors, and occasional sources of existential panic because you want to seem appropriate to them.

Even rest becomes difficult because cultural work has a peculiar ability to transform curiosity into productivity. Looking at things still somehow counts as work. And so a question slowly emerges. Who exactly are you outside of all this? Not your institution. Not your title. Not your curatorial voice, research interests, or carefully assembled aesthetic sensibilities, just you.

Perhaps what makes exhibition openings so interesting is that they expose this contradiction with unusual clarity. Everyone is physically present. Everyone appears connected. Yet beneath the surface exists a quieter search for recognition, conversation, and genuine encounter. And when those moments happen, they are often unexpectedly small. Someone quietly admits they are exhausted after late-night weeks of installation. Two people speaking honestly in a corner away from the crowd. Standing alone in front of an artwork before everyone arrives. The brief relief of no longer needing to appear interesting for five uninterrupted minutes. These moments feel significant precisely because they interrupt the performance.

In an age increasingly organised around algorithms, personal branding, and endless streams of content, there is still something possibly radical about people leaving their homes to stand together in a room and look at objects made by other human beings. In many ways, exhibition openings belong to a disappearing category of public ritual. They ask people to gather without certainty of outcome. There is no promise of efficiency, optimisation, or measurable reward. Nothing is being delivered directly to your screen. No algorithm has guaranteed that you will enjoy the experience. You simply arrive and participate, and that feels increasingly rare. Under track lighting, with a glass in hand, doing our best.