In Field Study of the Leaning Bodies/Traces, curators are invited to consider color as a political material. Each participating curator selects a color, realized as a vertical band painted onto the gallery wall. Subtle yet deliberate demarcations at hip and shoulder height interrupt these fields of color, registering echoes of bodily contact. These marks reference the project’s focus: the traces left by Visitor Assistants as they lean against the wall for brief moments of respite during extended gallery shifts.

Foregrounding the embodied labor that sustains cultural spaces, these painted demarcations function as both metaphor and evidence, markers of strenuous, repetitive, and necessary work that often remains unacknowledged. Through curatorial color selection and collective mark-making, the installation unfolds as a collaborative process of meaning-making, where color becomes a record of endurance, presence, and care.

As marks accumulate over time, the wall transforms into a living archive. Invisible labor is translated into visual form; color registers touch as bodies seek support against the wall, insisting on presence within institutional space.

Visitors are invited to rest against the wall and mark where their bodies find support.