The Tale Tellers
2013-ongoing | Digital | Curator / Founder
An ongoing curatorial project using fiction, stories and found imagery to explore how exhibitions can become acts of storytelling.
The Story as Exhibition
The Tale Tellers began in 2013 from Levine's interest in the idea of curating as storytelling, and what might happen if that idea were taken literally.
Rather than using a story as a theme or point of reference for an exhibition, Levine became interested in whether the plot itself could provide the structure: moving from point A to point B to point C, with artworks encountered along the way.
The idea came together during a six-week residency in New York. Levine had no gallery, but was meeting artists she wanted to work with and had been thinking about how to create a project that could bring these encounters together. Around the same time, she encountered the work of curators including Jens Hoffmann and the New York organisation Triple Candie, whose playful approaches to exhibition making challenged the conventions of what an exhibition could be.
The Tale Tellers emerged from this intersection of story, artists, fiction and the possibility of making an exhibition without having a conventional exhibition space.
Rather than using a story as a theme or point of reference for an exhibition, Levine became interested in whether the plot itself could provide the structure: moving from point A to point B to point C, with artworks encountered along the way.
The idea came together during a six-week residency in New York. Levine had no gallery, but was meeting artists she wanted to work with and had been thinking about how to create a project that could bring these encounters together. Around the same time, she encountered the work of curators including Jens Hoffmann and the New York organisation Triple Candie, whose playful approaches to exhibition making challenged the conventions of what an exhibition could be.
The Tale Tellers emerged from this intersection of story, artists, fiction and the possibility of making an exhibition without having a conventional exhibition space.
Building a Digital Space
The Tale Tellers website became a space for imagined exhibitions in which texts, stories, poems and songs could be broken down into approximately twelve plot points and translated into visual form.
Artists were invited to find a narrative that interested them and illustrate its progression through existing artworks, their own work, found images, GIFs or other visual material. The website functioned simultaneously as gallery, archive, publication and curatorial experiment.
For Levine, the digital space was not simply documentation of an exhibition that happened elsewhere. It was the exhibition space itself, a glowing white cube that could be filled and rearranged without the physical limitations of a conventional gallery.
Artists were invited to find a narrative that interested them and illustrate its progression through existing artworks, their own work, found images, GIFs or other visual material. The website functioned simultaneously as gallery, archive, publication and curatorial experiment.
For Levine, the digital space was not simply documentation of an exhibition that happened elsewhere. It was the exhibition space itself, a glowing white cube that could be filled and rearranged without the physical limitations of a conventional gallery.
Curating Through Fiction
Fiction became a way of thinking about the relationship between images and meaning.
Each Tale Tellers project takes an original text and a found or original image to create a third space between them. The narrative provides a structure through which the images can be encountered, while the images in turn alter how the story is understood.
This developed Levine's longstanding interest in the frame, originating in her study of photography and the act of cropping. What happens when an image is removed from its original context and placed within another? What happens when the viewer becomes the owner of the meaning?
The project also plays with questions of reproduction and authorship. Found images can be detached from their original contexts and placed into a new narrative, allowing ideas to be reinterpreted, re-authored and ultimately re-owned by the viewer.
Levine's interest in narrative predates her curatorial practice. Before studying photography, she had wanted to work in animation, particularly as an "in-betweener", the person responsible for creating the frames between key moments of an animated sequence. Although photography ultimately became her medium of study, the relationship between sequence, framing and narrative has continued to run through her curatorial work.
Each Tale Tellers project takes an original text and a found or original image to create a third space between them. The narrative provides a structure through which the images can be encountered, while the images in turn alter how the story is understood.
This developed Levine's longstanding interest in the frame, originating in her study of photography and the act of cropping. What happens when an image is removed from its original context and placed within another? What happens when the viewer becomes the owner of the meaning?
The project also plays with questions of reproduction and authorship. Found images can be detached from their original contexts and placed into a new narrative, allowing ideas to be reinterpreted, re-authored and ultimately re-owned by the viewer.
Levine's interest in narrative predates her curatorial practice. Before studying photography, she had wanted to work in animation, particularly as an "in-betweener", the person responsible for creating the frames between key moments of an animated sequence. Although photography ultimately became her medium of study, the relationship between sequence, framing and narrative has continued to run through her curatorial work.
From Digital to Physical
The Tale Tellers eventually moved beyond the screen. In 2018, Levine adapted The Jungle Book as part of SqW:Lab's open studio programme in Mumbai. Each of the programme's fellows responded to a sentence or plot point from the story, with the resulting works installed sequentially to tell the complete narrative.
In 2021, The Rag Pickers was presented at Stand4 Gallery in New York alongside john ros's solo exhibition. The project took its starting point from Walter Benjamin's description of himself as a "rag picker", collecting fragments, notes and scraps. Levine applied the same principle to the artists she brought together, selecting and assembling fragments of practices in response to a series of themes derived from the text.
The digital exhibition had become a physical one. The white cube was no longer virtual, but the curatorial premise remained the same: a narrative can become the architecture through which artworks are encountered.
In 2021, The Rag Pickers was presented at Stand4 Gallery in New York alongside john ros's solo exhibition. The project took its starting point from Walter Benjamin's description of himself as a "rag picker", collecting fragments, notes and scraps. Levine applied the same principle to the artists she brought together, selecting and assembling fragments of practices in response to a series of themes derived from the text.
The digital exhibition had become a physical one. The white cube was no longer virtual, but the curatorial premise remained the same: a narrative can become the architecture through which artworks are encountered.
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The Exhibition as Method
The Tale Tellers sits at the centre of Levine's interest in expanded curating, asking what happens when the exhibition is no longer defined by its physical container, and when the curator can construct the conditions for an encounter rather than inherit them.
The project has also become a way for Levine to use exhibition making as a method of research. Each tale creates a different structure through which to look at artists and their practices, while the process itself becomes a way of developing ideas, making connections and learning through collaboration. The structure provides a reason to approach an artist, to look at their practice differently and to experiment with how works might sit alongside one another.
This is part of Levine's wider interest in expanded curating: not simply taking an exhibition beyond the gallery, but questioning what constitutes the exhibition in the first place. In The Tale Tellers, the story provides the structure, the website becomes the gallery and the relationship between text and image becomes the frame.
The project continues to grow intermittently, whenever Levine encounters a story, an artist or an idea that creates the impulse to make another tale.
The project has also become a way for Levine to use exhibition making as a method of research. Each tale creates a different structure through which to look at artists and their practices, while the process itself becomes a way of developing ideas, making connections and learning through collaboration. The structure provides a reason to approach an artist, to look at their practice differently and to experiment with how works might sit alongside one another.
This is part of Levine's wider interest in expanded curating: not simply taking an exhibition beyond the gallery, but questioning what constitutes the exhibition in the first place. In The Tale Tellers, the story provides the structure, the website becomes the gallery and the relationship between text and image becomes the frame.
The project continues to grow intermittently, whenever Levine encounters a story, an artist or an idea that creates the impulse to make another tale.
