Camp Space is a pop-up art gallery and cultural hub driven by the vision of its owner and curator, Tayla Camp. Camp landed in the Berlin art scene via a career in fashion, museum marketing in London, and an art tech start-up in New York. She has wanted to pursue a curatorial career since her Master's in Museum studies, but it has remained inaccessible. This Gallery Weekend, she decided to stop waiting for someone to give her permission to curate a show and just went for it. When is the right moment to do what you desire? 

Tayla was kind enough to ask some of our questions for the Bpigs audience and other aspiring young curators. 

How did you get started organizing the pop-up and the first show? What were some of the biggest challenges?

I've wanted to pursue a curatorial career since I graduated with a Master's degree in Museum Studies. But breaking into the curatorial field is difficult, and I never found that opportunity, though the desire always remained in the back of my mind. Cut to 2022, I'd finally saved enough money to afford a modest space to host an exhibition for a few weeks, and so I decided to stop waiting for someone to hire me or give me permission to curate a show and just went for it.

Also, during this time, I was struggling mentally and emotionally, and I found myself wondering how others navigate such negative internal experiences. That then became the question I posed to two artist friends of mine, Roxanne Krumm and Skai, and we built the show together around our shared responses to mental unrest. I suppose the biggest challenge, perhaps for all three of us, was having to revisit emotional difficulties from the past to inform the exhibition, titled 'Is It No More Beautiful Than That?'. The second biggest challenge for me was finding a way to balance my full-time job and gallery responsibilities. There were several late nights and early mornings, but those were happy sacrifices. 

How do you select or find the artists that you work with?

In this first show, I had the privilege of showing works by artists I already knew personally, who believed in my idea for the exhibition and wanted to be a part of it. In the future, I intend to use every avenue possible to find artists about whose work I am passionate - whether that comes from social media, attending exhibitions, art events, fairs, flea markets, or simply through word of mouth. The most important factor for me in selecting artists is whether or not I feel strongly about their story and storytelling - can I identify or empathize with their work/subject matter? Did I have a strong emotional reaction to their pieces, their narrative?

Which, if any, other types of programming do you organize outside of the exhibition format?

One of my great passions is sharing my thoughts and interpretations about paintings, specifically those relegated to the annals of art history. I've done this through my Instagram account @taylacampcurates (formerly @candidcurator) for years, and with this exhibition, I finally had the opportunity to do something similar with works of art situated in the present. Recently, I hosted a seminar in the gallery where I explored the various art historical references and influences in both Skai and Roxanne's work, finding thematic and/or stylistic connections to their pieces in the show. It was fantastic, and I had such wonderful feedback from those who attended - I intend to incorporate such seminars in future shows. 

What can you tell us about the exhibition on right now?

In 'Is It No More Beautiful Than That?' we have the opportunity to observe how two different artists process and navigate emotional challenges in their lives. Skai's approach to this prompt was simply to present the inner workings of her psyche in an honest, realistic, and somewhat brutal fashion, while Roxanne leaned into a more whimsical, surrealistic approach that masked, in a way, the onerous theme. Nearly all of the works were created specifically for the exhibition so we can study their raw emotions and coping processes in real time -  a truly remarkable experience. 

Roxanne Krumm "Of Lunar and Lunacy"

"IS IT NO MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN THAT?" follows two young women artists as they navigate a complex, ever-deviating path from disillusionment and discontent to emotional resilience. Through new works in distinctly different yet complementary styles, artists Roxanne Krumm (b. 1988, USA) and Skai (b. 1992, Lithuania) document their determined, if not fraught, efforts to seek truth and sanguinity both within themselves and their perception of the world around them.

with works by: Roxanne Krumm and Skai - on view until Oct 2nd.
Camp Space Brunnenstraße 22, 10119 Berlin

Roxanne Krumm, Static and Warm, 2023, Oil on canvas, 90x90 cm