This online exhibition presents a curated reflection on my work in the course Curating Data. Across the semester, I have collected, categorized, visualised, and reflected on data in different forms. Rather than treating data as neutral or objective, this exhibition frames data as situated knowledge: produced through choices, assumptions, and infrastructures.
The exhibition brings together three assignments as curatorial objects. Each one represents a different moment in my learning process and demonstrates how data practices actively shape what becomes visible, meaningful, and remembered.
From Data to Situated Knowledge
Curating a semester of data practices
This exhibition curates a semester of learning about data as situated knowledge rather than neutral fact. Throughout the course Curating Data, I have explored how data is produced through acts of selection, quantification, and classification, and how these acts shape what becomes visible, meaningful, and authoritative.
Drawing on critical data studies, this exhibition approaches data as something that is made rather than found. As Rob Kitchin argues, data should be understood as capta — actively taken and shaped through social, technical, and institutional processes rather than raw reflections of reality (The Data Revolution). This perspective has informed both the structure of the exhibition and the way the individual works are framed.
Rather than presenting my work as a chronological overview of assignments, the exhibition is structured around two exhibition objects that together articulate how data becomes knowledge through practice and infrastructure. Each object represents a different but interconnected dimension of data work: quantification and classification.
The first exhibition object, Assignment 1 — Collecting and Quantifying Data, examines data collection at a personal scale. Using a dataset based on my shoe collection, this object demonstrates how quantification is not a transparent process that reveals truth, but an interpretive practice shaped by subjective decisions. Choices about what could be measured, compared, or excluded reflect what Jacqueline Wernimont describes as the non-neutral nature of quantification, where assigning numbers is always a creative and world-making act rather than a purely descriptive one (Wernimont, 2021). The dataset therefore represents a situated perspective rather than an objective account.
The second exhibition object, Curating Classification as Knowledge, shifts focus from data collection to the systems that organize and stabilize knowledge. Taking Sorting Things Out as its point of departure, this object treats theory itself as a curatorial lens. Bowker and Star demonstrate how classification systems embed values and power relations, shaping what can be recorded, compared, and remembered. Reading this text during the semester reframed categorization as a political and ethical act, revealing how infrastructures actively participate in the production of knowledge.
Together, these two exhibition objects articulate a movement from data as situated personal practice to data as structured and institutionalized knowledge. Quantification and classification appear not as neutral tools, but as processes through which realities are shaped, constrained, and given meaning. Curated side by side, the works emphasize that data only becomes knowledge through situated practices informed by theory, choice, and responsibility.
This exhibition does not aim to present definitive conclusions about data. Instead, it archives a learning process in which data was continuously questioned and reframed. Curating data, as shown here, is not merely about organizing information, but about taking responsibility for how knowledge is produced, legitimized, and shared.
CURATORIAL STATEMENT
From Data to Situated Knowledge
Data as Interpretation, Not Truth
This part of the exhibition presents a dataset based on my personal collection of shoes. The goal of the assignment was to datafy an analogue collection by assigning variables and attributes. On the surface, the dataset appears simple and objective, consisting of properties such as brand, colour, and use. However, a closer examination reveals how deeply subjective the process of quantification is.
The dataset was shaped by practical and personal decisions: which shoes were included, which variables were considered relevant, and which aspects of the collection remained invisible. Emotional attachments, memories, price, and comfort were largely excluded, not because they were unimportant, but because they were harder to quantify within a spreadsheet format.
This object illustrates that quantification is not a transparent act that reveals an underlying truth. Instead, it is an interpretive practice that reflects the perspective and priorities of the data collector. By acknowledging the subjectivity of the dataset, the work challenges the assumption that numbers speak for themselves and highlights how data always represents a particular way of seeing the world.
Curating Classification as Knowledge
This exhibition object treats a theoretical text from the syllabus as a curatorial object. Rather than summarising the text, the aim is to show how theory actively shapes the way data practices are understood and performed.
In Sorting Things Out, Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star argue that classification systems are never neutral. Categories do not simply describe the world; they organize it by embedding values, priorities, and power relations. Every act of classification includes certain perspectives while excluding others.
Reading this text during the semester changed how I approached my own data work. Decisions that initially appeared technical — such as selecting variables, assigning categories, or structuring datasets — came to be understood as ethical and political acts with real consequences. Classification does not merely reflect reality; it helps produce it.
This perspective resonated across my assignments. From quantifying a personal shoe collection to visualising NBA data, classificatory choices shaped what became visible, comparable, and meaningful. Curated within this exhibition, Sorting Things Out functions as a lens through which the rest of the works can be read.
By including a theoretical text as an exhibition object, this section emphasizes that theory itself is part of data practice. Reading and applying theory is a way of curating knowledge and shaping how data becomes situated understanding.
References
Bowker, Geoffrey C., & Susan Leigh Star. (2000). Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Kitchin, Rob. (2022). The Data Revolution. London: SAGE Publications.
Wernimont, Jacqueline. (2021). Quantification. In Uncertain Archives: Critical Keywords for Big Data (pp. 427–431). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.