The Architecture of Resistance: How One Exhibition Takes Shape

The architecture of an exhibition is rarely visible to those who move through it, yet every wall, every angle of light, every carefully calibrated distance between artworks shapes how we encounter what hangs before us. At The Museum of Modern Art, curator Roxana Marcoci has approached the design of “Taking Back Our Space: Photographic Perspectives” as something far more deliberate than mere presentation: as a spatial argument in itself.

The exhibition, which occupies the museum’s second floor through May 2027, explores the intricate relationships between contemporary bodies and the public spaces they inhabit. The works gathered here engage queer, decolonial and feminist viewpoints, each photograph a document of reclamation, resistance and refusal. Marcoci has understood that such powerful material demands an environment thoughtfully constructed to honour its intentions.

Rather than imposing a uniform aesthetic across the gallery, each wall has been individually tailored to the particular artist and work it frames. This approach reflects a deeper philosophy: that the exhibition itself becomes part of the artistic conversation, neither neutral nor imposing, but rather responsive and generative. The design becomes a form of curation, a visual dialect that speaks to the complexity housed within the frame.

The Space as Statement

Consider the work of photographer Nona Faustine, whose images confront the architecture of institutional power and colonial violence. Her photographs demand to be seen within a context that acknowledges their political weight. Similarly, the decolonial perspectives embedded throughout the exhibition require a spatial framework that refuses to domesticate or diminish their force. By tailoring the design to each artist’s vision, Marcoci ensures that the gallery itself becomes complicit in the act of taking back space, of asserting presence and demanding recognition.

The photographic works span generations and geographies, from Marianne Wex’s foundational documentation of body language and patriarchal structures to Wendy Red Star’s series examining institutional practices and Indigenous representation. Each addresses how our bodies move through space, how we are perceived and contained, and how we resist containment. The exhibition design acknowledges these nuances not through explanatory text but through spatial gesture: through the breathing room afforded to each work, through the relationship between images on adjacent walls, through the quality of light and the scale of presentation.

This is curation as a generous act. Marcoci’s approach suggests that exhibition design is not a neutral container but an active participant in meaning making. The walls do not simply hold the photographs; they converse with them. The space does not simply shelter the work; it amplifies its voice. In this careful orchestration of sight lines and surfaces, of proximity and distance, the exhibition itself becomes a form of resistance, a deliberate choice to create an environment where these photographic perspectives can be fully, completely heard.

Imagery courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art (@themuseumofmodernart).