I was working on an exhibition and one of the projects we wanted to include was very exciting for me, a very idealistic public building. We chose an ink drawing to represent it, one of the first concept documents that was on the architect’s website. It was so beautiful that we wanted to blow it up on a huge wall. I knew the drawing was by one of the lead architects on the project and I reached out to her. She said, “I can't help you. We all left. Me and this other woman and this other woman and this other woman, we all left at the same time. It's been a very difficult couple months. I can't tell you who stayed. I can't even tell you who's going to answer the phone if you call them.”

She didn’t want to have anything to do with it, basically. But she said it in a kind way. So a bunch of women in senior positions had left. Weird! How is it that all these women suddenly leave the office of this man?

And why don’t they want to talk about why they left?

Then, a few weeks later, my emails to the firm were answered by an intern promising to get us the drawing. This was followed by a back and forth for weeks asking them for the high res file–a file that was literally on the website. Could you please just send it to me! And when I finally got it, it was a different drawing. A different ink drawing that wasn't as good. It looked similar but it wasn't the same and it was signed by the architect. His name was on the new drawing. And meanwhile the drawing that I had been asking for had disappeared from their website.

So this woman, who was a lead architect on this project, who made the drawing that arguably defined the concept for this building, gets her drawing erased. She’s still credited, I mean, her name is on the list for the project, but that’s not the same as making the key image.

We were already in production and didn't have time to think, so we had to include the replacement drawing. And I'm still bothered by it. I contributed to giving a platform to a person whose work I’m not sure I believe in anymore. I felt like I didn’t have the power to say no. I would have still had to solve the problem of the white wall. Completely removing the drawing at the last minute would have generated a whole lot of problems. And I think that I would have to be higher up in the chain of command to take responsibility for that.

In my experience the whole cultural industry runs on overworked women who simply do not have the time, the resources, or frankly the space to think. Of course, the moment I saw the file they’d sent, I wanted to make a statement. This is not what I asked you for. But we had that opening date and a wall that's going to be empty.

Cultural institutions are like architecture and design magazines: everyone’s afraid of making any political statement or taking any stance towards an architect because, you know, life's a marathon, and who knows, maybe in five years, you will want to publish this architect's work again and then you can't afford to hear no.

I think there is also reckoning to be had, to shatter this idea of leading figures in architecture. We have to stop it. That’s something else this experience taught me. It should be a wake up call for all of us that are enabling the hero narrative. It leads to abuse. We need to start thinking about offices as collaboratives, about architecture as a profession where many hands give shape to a project.

Bio

The Complicit Curator has been producing international architecture and design exhibitions, publications, and events for over fifteen years.

Lev Bratishenko is a writer and recovering curator. His most recent publication is 21 Games you can play with a Cosmic House, and his curatorial inventions include the Come and Forget series proposing benevolent acts of mass amnesia, and How to, a workshop that brings strangers together to produce interventions in architectural culture: How to: not make an architecture magazine (2018); How to: disturb the public (2019); How to: reward and punish (2020); How to: not become a ‘developer’ (2022); How to: do no harm (2022); How to: mind the moon (2023). He was the inaugural Curator Public at the Canadian Centre of Architecture.