Rethinking How We Exhibit: Why Audience Traces Deserve Centre Stage

In most galleries, the marks left behind by audiences are treated as dirt or damage — smudges to be wiped away, fingerprints to be polished out, disruptions to be quietly corrected before the next viewer arrives. The space is to be kept clean and white, allowing the artworks to take centre stage. But what if those marks are actually part of the art? What if they reveal something essential about how people want to experience art, especially in South Africa’s often text-heavy and painting-focused, didactic exhibition culture?

Close-up of Assimilation

Gut-trusting 

Many contemporary exhibitions rely on lengthy wall texts, academic statements, and precise instructions — as though the artwork cannot stand on its own without a guided tour. On the other hand, some artworks are superficial enough to be understood immediately without any emotional, intellectual or embodied investment from the audience. While both these approaches have their place, they often leave audiences unsure of how to trust their own instincts (see this informative study by Jennifer Lauwrens). In both of these extremes, the visitor’s body — with its senses, gestures, and curiosity — grows complacent and uninterested in its own subjective and experiential experiences.

When people are permitted to explore, something remarkable happens. They touch, rearrange, play, test, wonder, and leave traces that reveal a far more honest and personal encounter that often exceeds words and makes a lasting impact.

Ignorable traces

Most traces, if not documented as part of the creative process or as art itself, could be ignored. In my practice, I consider them as mark-making and a record of performance. Although there were a lot more than what is listed below, I watched these traces accumulate in my exhibitions:

• fingerprints warming the surface of bronze wax or pressed onto pristine paper

• scratches appearing on various surfaces as people stood on, drew on or tested materials,

• rearranged fragments forming small sculptural gestures,

• marks of movement across the floor, the drawings or the acetate.

  
  

I made it my mission to capture and see the traces as accidents and important indications of movement, interest and knowledge; expressions of how people made sense of the work through their bodies rather than through written explanation.

And yet, in a traditional gallery, these gestures would be erased or reset after each day because they don’t “belong.” They disrupt the polished image of the exhibition. When the traces are considered as part of the work itself, they become evidence of:

• collective memory,

• embodied learning,

• material dialogue,

• unspoken curiosity,

• the public’s desire to connect beyond text and theory.

  
  

In this way, audience traces become an evolving and almost living archive — a record of participation that challenges the boundaries between viewer, maker, and artwork. The exhibition becomes less about presenting a fixed meaning and more about hosting an iterative conversation.

Close-up of Tangible and Transparent feedback

Who gets to decide which stories matter?

Every mark left behind could become a story — a gesture of connection, curiosity, or courage. The question is not whether these traces should be allowed, but whether we are ready to recognise them as meaningful. When we do, the exhibition becomes a gathering of voices, not a single monologue; the gallery becomes a space where knowledge is shared and explored by everyone who walks through the door.

However, allowing visitors to leave something of themselves behind to form part of the work takes a lot of trust from the audience and artist… not to mention justification to institutions. Ironically, this approach requires a rigorous explanation to other artists, gallery spaces, academics, and even you, dear reader. By making the audience read less, the exhibition requires documentation and explanation, often in the form of text or verbal explanation. As discussed earlier, words are often not sufficient to explain embodied interactions or reasons for actions or feelings. 

How do we know that a specific trace has a story if we cannot use text? How do we justify the meaning, reason or value of the exhibition? Do we have to explain, or would it be enough to create spaces that invite them to feel, to test, to interpret, to explore with all their senses?