The first gallery that said yes to me, I didn't even know I was asking

My first real gallery came out of nothing I did well.

I was sharing a studio in Berlin, and a woman who had the space next to mine was curating a small group show about the copy. She needed one more printmaker because someone dropped out two weeks before. She asked me, I said yes, that was it. No portfolio, no email, no strategy. Total accident. I have been trying to reverse-engineer that accident for eight years now and I still don't know how to do it on purpose.

So the question: how did your first one actually happen? Not the version you put in the bio, the real one.

I want to know if anyone got in by anything resembling a plan, because everyone I know seems to have got in sideways. And a second thing, since I am curious: who did the asking? Did you approach them, or did someone hand you the door already open? I think the second happens more than we admit and we pretend it was all our hustle.

I will say mine: nobody handed me anything, a curator needed a warm body with a press. Tell me yours is better.

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Elin Holm·3w

Mine was a group show in a library. A librarian saw a small collage of mine pinned on the noticeboard at the conservation studio where I work and asked if I wanted to hang a few things for a month. No portfolio either. I said yes because it was two minutes from my flat.

I think the honest answer is that most of these come from being visible in a room you already occupy. The accident needs something to land on. What I've never worked out is whether that is strategy or just luck wearing a nicer word.

Giulia BrunoOP·3w

The conservation studio is the part I keep thinking about. You were already in a room full of people who handle objects carefully for a living, and one of them looked at something you'd pinned up. That's not luck, exactly. It's a room where the noticing is professional.

But I'd push back a little on "visible in a room you already occupy" being the whole answer, because I've occupied plenty of rooms and nothing landed. I think the accident needs a specific kind of room. Not just people around you, but people around you who already have a reason to look. My studio neighbour was curating a show about the copy. She wasn't looking for good work, she was looking for a printmaker. I happened to be the thing she needed that week. That's closer to luck than I'd like.

So maybe it's strategy wearing luck's coat, or luck doing strategy's job. I still can't tell, and I've stopped trusting anyone who says they can. Eight years of trying to do it on purpose and the only ones that worked were the ones where I was already standing in the right room when someone needed something.

Inês Costa·3w

Mine was not an accident exactly, but it was also not a plan. A woman who ran a small bookshop here in Porto had bought two of my prints at a market, and a year later she asked if I would put work on her walls for a month. I said yes before I understood she meant a real show with a date and a poster. What I remember is not the opening but the week before, sitting on the floor of my kitchen trimming paper because I had never hung anything on a wall that strangers would walk past.

I don't think the accident can be reverse-engineered, honestly. What can be, maybe, is being the kind of person someone thinks of when a slot opens. That part you can work at, quietly, by just being around and showing the work to people who are near you. The rest is timing you don't control.

Giulia BrunoOP·3w

The kitchen floor is the real part of that story. Everyone wants to hear about the opening and you keep going back to trimming paper because that is where you actually decided something. I like that a lot.

And the woman from the bookshop, she bought two prints first. That is not nothing. That is a year of her looking at your work on her own wall before she asked. I called mine an accident because it was, but yours was slower than that, more like a conversation that had been going for twelve months before anyone named it. Maybe the honest version is that it is never the plan, it is just someone having lived with the work long enough that asking becomes obvious.

You are right that you cannot reverse-engineer the accident. But the being-the-kind-of-person part, I am not so sure it is teachable either, and I am not sure I want it to be. The whole reason it worked for both of us is that nobody was performing availability. The minute you start being the kind of person who gets asked, you become the kind of person who is asking.

Giulia BrunoOP·3w

The bookshop part matters more than you're giving it credit for. She bought two prints at a market, a year before. That is not an accident, that is someone living with your work in their house and then deciding they want more of it. The slow version.

My first was a group show where the curator dropped out and someone handed my name along. Useful, but it never repeated. What repeated was the slower thing, people who had one print of mine at home coming back. I have stopped trying to reverse-engineer the lucky version. It does not seem to have a mechanism.

The kitchen floor though. Trimming paper the week before is where the work stops being yours and starts being theirs. I still get that, and I still hate it a little.