The Shape of the Room: On Language, Power, and the Marginal

I went to a lecture by Billy Tang, who spoke about his curatorial practice across three institutions: Magician Space in Beijing, Rockbund Art Museum in Shanghai, and Para Site in Hong Kong. His central provocation framed the talk: can the languages used by institutions — behavioral, procedural, structural — accommodate the marginal, and support the forging of enduring connections?

He didn’t answer the question explicitly, but his response came through the projects he shared. He walked us through exhibitions and initiatives shaped by disruption: small, deliberate shifts in what a space could hold, who it could centre, what it could refuse. His emphasis wasn’t on grand statements but on working differently, especially during unstable times like the global pandemic.

The talk was thoughtful, but it left me with questions. Not because it lacked value, but since I live in a different institutional context, with different pressures and opportunities. I’m not convinced the structures I encounter even want to accommodate the marginal, let alone build anything enduring with it.

So this is what I want to add.

When we ask whether institutional language can accommodate the marginal, we have to start by asking what “accommodation” really means, especially here in Aotearoa. Too often, it looks like tolerance, not support. Inclusion, not redistribution. A careful invitation where the shape of the room never changes, but someone gestures vaguely at an empty seat and says, “Come in, we made space.”

But who does that space belong to? Who sets the terms of entry, and what’s unsaid about how you’re meant to behave once you’re there? Procedural language doesn’t just record what happens, it reinforces what counts. Structural language isn’t just systems, it’s value hierarchies with spreadsheets attached. And behavioral language? That’s the part where you’re expected to be grateful. To not make too much noise. To speak on behalf of something, but not too often about yourself.

Here in Aotearoa, I’ve watched institutions build projects about the marginal while expecting those of us at the edge to carry the emotional labour, the cultural translation, the risk. “Collaboration” becomes optics, while power quietly stays put. The language is inclusive until you push against it. Until you say something that doesn’t land cleanly. Until you become inconvenient.

So when I think about whether these structures can support enduring connection, I think: not by accident. Not by inertia. Not unless we change the shape of the room, not just who gets invited into it.

And so what do we do?
We seek out structures that fit. We move toward kaupapa-based spaces that don’t just permit the marginal, but are formed by it. Or we get to building. Not as a perfect solution, but as a refusal.

Sometimes that looks like Paemanu, where whakapapa isn’t a theme but a logic. Or Mata Aho, whose collective practice moves at the speed of trust, not funding cycles. Sometimes it looks like strategic shifts at places like Enjoy, where kaupapa Māori and kaupapa Moana frameworks reshape not just programming but governance and values. Or gatherings by Toi Māori Aotearoa, where infrastructure is in the kōrero, the shared breath, the names that carry us. Sometimes it’s artist-run spaces that reject the treadmill entirely, building for care, access, and autonomy, not exposure.

These spaces don’t just accommodate difference, they move from it. They ask different questions. They hold different timelines. They often operate on very little, but they hold a clarity that’s hard to find elsewhere.

But what happens when even those spaces stop fitting?

And they do. Not always from failure, but from pressure, scarcity, volume. The more people who recognise something true in them, the more stretched thin they become. Suddenly they have to say no. Suddenly they’re institutions themselves. Then they face the same dilemma: how to scale care without turning it into policy? How to hold integrity without gatekeeping? How to honour the marginal when there’s not enough room for everyone?

Even the best-intentioned kaupapa can get stretched thin. And sometimes, even inside a space built “for us,” your practice still doesn’t fit. That’s not failure, it’s just the truth of being plural.

So then what?
Then we sit with it. Long enough to notice what the discomfort is telling us. Is it invisibility? Grief? Ego? Exhaustion? Have we outgrown something, or never fit to begin with?

We stop expecting any one space to hold everything. We recognise that even the best spaces are partial, specific, limited by the capacity of the people who hold them. Then we build parallel. Tangential. Small and stubborn. A practice, a ritual, a refusal. A blog, even. We stop orbiting the centre and start imagining life off its axis.

And sometimes we go quiet. Not to disappear, but to listen. The answer might not be “make something new.” It might be “join something old.” Or “rest.” Or “wait.” Or simply: “not yet.”

Because fitting isn’t always the goal. Sometimes the goal is just to keep going. Without distortion. Without trimming your edges to slide into someone else’s framework. Keep going, even when it’s not clear where.

But really, let’s talk about that language.
Behavioral. Procedural. Structural. The scaffolding of the institution. The unseen code that tells you how to move, how to speak, how to belong. It doesn’t announce itself, it’s in the wording of a form, the pace of a meeting, the hierarchy of an email thread. Who gets cc’d. Who chairs. Who apologises for speaking too long.

You learn it like a second skin, not fluently, but defensively. The pauses, the tones, the institutional yes that means no. How much of yourself to reveal. How to sound like someone they already trust.

This language is invisible to the fluent. But for those of us outside it, fluency comes at a cost. You can learn it, sure. But you might lose something: a rhythm, a truth, a way of speaking that doesn’t flatten.

And language shapes outcomes. It’s not just about getting a seat at the table. It’s about whether your way of thinking can survive in the room. Whether your metaphors make sense to funders. Whether your urgency matches the calendar. Whether your silences get misread as disengagement. Whether your anger is mistaken for unprofessionalism.

When institutional languages don’t shift, they don’t just exclude people, they exclude possibilities. Futures. Ways of knowing. Ways of working that don’t follow a proven template.

So yes, we can learn to speak them. But we can also choose not to. We can speak in ways that call something else into being. Even if the room goes quiet. Even if the form gets sent back. Again.

Some of us aren’t here to speak the right way. We’re here to speak honestly. To say the thing that needs saying, even when the structure doesn’t yet know how to hear it.

That is where Billy’s question still lingers. Not in the answer he left unsaid or unspecified, but in the ways we keep testing the languages we are offered, bending them, breaking them, or refusing them altogether to see what else might endure.

Hayley Walmsley (Ngāti Kawau, Ngāti Tautahi, Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Porou) is an artist, writer, and curator based in Ōtautahi. She makes work about art, systems, and the sneaky ways meaning gets made, and sometimes missed. She writes No Neutral Spaces because she’s too grumpy to let things slide, and too soft to throw the first punch.