Design Art Papers 2025 | No. 13

in which the viewer does not consume the exhibition from a detached perspective but becomes physically and ethically implicated in it. [6] By positioning the body as a spatial operator rather than a representational object, the exhibition resonated with Michel de Certeau’s concept of spatial practice, which describes how space is produced by movement, memory, and lived experience rather than by architecture alone. [7] In Utopian Body, space was not a passive container for artworks but a performative field activated by the presence of the viewer’s body. Every step, pause, or shift in gaze contributed to what could be called a „corporeal cartography” of the exhibition. In doing so, the curatorial practice enacted what Beatrice von Bismarck calls the „curatorial condition” – a relational, temporal, and affectivemode inwhichartworks, institutions,histories, and bodies become co-constitutive [8] . The gallery thus became not a site of display but a site of negotiation between the built past and speculative futures. Within this framework, the curator emerges as a mediator between philosophical speculation and embodied perception. Rather than delivering fixed narratives, the curatorial choice of Utopian Body established a field of openness and uncertainty, in which the viewer was invited to inhabit the tension between corporeal vulnerability and utopian aspiration. The both represented and enacted body became a method of thinking, a way to experience time, history, and spatiality simultaneously. To fully address the dialogue between contemporary artisticpractices andhistoricenvironments it isnecessary to situate the body within a broader discourse of architecture, heritage, and spatial memory. The body is not merely displayedwithinarchitectural space, itactivelyinterprets, re- writes, and re-inhabits it. This understanding reframes built heritage not solely as an artifact of the past but as a living structure continuously reinscribed by human presence. It activates affective heritage, transforming space from an object of preservation into an experience of relation. In Utopian Body, Ciobanu’s works do not sit passively within the gallery, they reconfigure it, carving out micro- architectures of intimacy, displacement, and reflection. The body fragmented, suspended, speculative becomes a method for rethinking spatial continuity between past and future. This aligns with the contemporary approach in curatorial studies that advocates a shift from preservation to relational activation of heritage. Rather than treating historical architecture as a background for art, curatorial practice can transform it into an epistemic surface, one that absorbs and redistributes new forms of knowledge. [9] In this sense, the human body serves as a lens throughwhich built NOTE / END NOTES [1] Michel Foucault, „The Utopian Body”, in Michel Foucault: Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology , ed. James D. Faubion (New York: The New Press, 1998), 87. Design Applications. Biomimetics, MDPI, 23.08.2024 [2] Ibidem , 89. [3] Ibidem , 91. [4] Ibidem , 93. [5] Paul O’Neill, The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s) (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2012), 14. [6] Irit Rogoff, “Smuggling: An Embodied Criticality,” in Curating and the Educational Turn , ed. Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson (Amsterdam: Open Editions/de Appel, 2010), 37. [7] Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life , trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 91. [8] Beatrice von Bismarck, The Curatorial: A Philosophy of Curating (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2012), 22. [9] Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson, eds., Curating and the Educational Turn (Amsterdam: Open Editions/de Appel, 2010), 54. [10] Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space , trans. Maria Jolas (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964), 30; Jean-Luc Nancy, Corpus , trans. Richard A. Rand (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), 15. heritage is experienced not as a finished product of history but as a process of continuous becoming Furthermore, the body enables a redefinition of space beyond Euclidean or Cartesian logic. Space is no longer measured solely by its dimensions, but by its capacity to hold memory, emotion, and anticipation. As theorists such as Gaston Bachelard and Jean-Luc Nancy argue, space becomes inhabitable not through material structure alone but through resonance, intimacy, and coexistence. [10] The exhibition space thus functions not as a neutral container but as a site of ethical and affective negotiation where the viewer encounters the vulnerability of the human body alongside the endurance of stone, brick, and plaster. In this way, Utopian Body proposes a model in which the body is not only represented but fundamentally architectural. Itdwellswithinthegallerywhilealsoimagining its transformation. It remembers but also anticipates. This is where curatorial practice reveals its utopian dimension: not by escaping the past, but by reactivating it through embodied speculation. The body, as theorized by Michel Foucault and reimagined within Claudiu Ciobanu’s Utopian Body, emerges not merely as a biological entity but as a spatial, philosophical, and speculative medium. It is both archive and horizon, both the first place of experience and the last place from which thought departs towardutopia. Incuratorial practice, this understanding enables a profound reconfiguration of how we relate to built heritage and contemporary artistic production. Exhibitions suchasUtopianBodydemonstrate that curating the human form is not an act of nostalgic preservation but one of speculative activation. The body becomes a lens through which history is not preserved as static memory, but reinhabited, reinterpreted, and projected toward futurity. Situated within the materiality of Artep Gallery, Claudiu Ciobanu’s fragmented corporeal architectures invite viewers to experience the gallery not as a neutral site but as a living field of tension between erosion and imagination, ruin and renewal. In this light, curatorial thought assumes a utopian role: it does not aim to escape the real, but to reshape it through embodied relation. The curator becomes a designer of coexistence between past and present, between bodies and walls, between visibility andabsence.Curatingthehumanformthusbecomesanact of world-making, one that opens new spaces of reciprocity, vulnerability, and shared imagination. Ultimately, the utopian body is not elsewhere; it is the body that learns to inhabit space differently, to connect, transform, and project newmodes of living together. 283 282 / / / / Caiete de Arte și Design / nr. 13 / 2025 / / / / Publicație a Centrului de Cercetare și Creație în Artele Decorative și Design / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /