Radical Sincerity as Curatorial Method
Impulse Magazine, April 2026.
by gaoyuan
Sincerity is hardly the art world’s default language.
“The idea of radical sincerity emerges here not as a clear-cut strategy but a fundamental shift in the conditions of curation, one that emerges from lived experience—from an itch or a pain—without abstraction. Curation becomes an artistic practice in its own right, responding to a deeper calling without hiding behind inherited frameworks that signal legitimacy. In this sense, the curator operates less as an author than as a conduit, allowing forces beyond individual agency to take form. The resulting work is driven neither by a compulsion toward resolution nor an aestheticization of trauma, but by a relinquishing of ego, through which greater resonance can emerge.”