about this book

Hosting Space explores how practices of hosting, such as providing access, support, and spaces for gathering, operate within an art institution. It invites readers to reconsider how these activities are embedded in the spaces we inhabit and how they shape the way we use them.

The publication reflects on an exhibition and event programme curated by Maike Statz at Hordaland Kunstsenter in Bergen in 2023. Bringing together visual documentation, new writing, and interviews with Staci Bu Shea, Océane Vé-Réveillac, and César Reyes Nájera, the book considers how art institutions and spatial practitioners might work differently by prioritising accessibility, interdependence, difference, maintenance, and spaces for spontaneous gathering.

Designed by Francesca Lucchitta and edited by Mathijs van Geest, Hosting Space is both an invitation and an active archive, contributing to ongoing discussions around socially engaged practices, institutional critique, and exhibition-making as a method of research.

Maike Statz (born 1992) is an Australian interior architect, artist, and writer living in Oslo and Amsterdam. Her work explores the relationship between bodies, emotions, behaviour, identity, and space. Informed by feminist and queer practices, she investigates spatial inequalities and seeks alternative tools and methods for space-making.

This book was selected by Tique for Objects & Sounds.