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ZENERGIES · COFOUNDER · CREATIVE LEAD

One curatorial system, run across multiple installments — built with Marylin Rini.

Zenergies organizes local artists into immersive environments using a shared symbolic category system. The same brief has been run twice — by zodiac sign, then by element — with a third installment now in development.

Artists, vendors & performers per installment

+ 45

Installments completed —

Part 03 in development

2 of 3

Environments: by sign (Part 01), then by element (Part 02)

12 → 5

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OVERVIEW

Curating 45 independent artists into one cohesive space — every time

Zenergies needed to turn a room full of unrelated artists, mediums, and belief systems into environments that felt designed on purpose, without flattening anyone's individual work to do it.
 

Challenge

  • Build immersive, thematic environments that resonate across diverse belief systems

  • Engage local audiences through accessible, meaningful art curation

  • Highlight 45+ multi-disciplinary artists without overwhelming or diluting the experience

Approach

Instead of hand-placing every artist, built a category-driven system: assign each artist to a category from a shared symbolic structure, give every artist the same simple brief, and let the constraint generate connections between unrelated work — rather than manufacturing those connections by hand.

Execution

The same brief runs through a new category system each time it's staged — zodiac sign, then element, with a season-based installment in development. Each one is broken down individually below.

THE SYSTEM

The two mechanics every installment shares, regardless of which category system runs through them.

01 - THE BRIEF → THE CONSTRAINT

One task per artist. No visibility into anyone else's work.

Every artist receives the same brief: create a new piece, or choose an existing self-made work, that represents their assigned category — in whatever medium they want. No one sees what anyone else is making until installation day.

The constraint does the curating. Visual and thematic connections between completely unrelated artists show up on their own, without a curator hand-matching pieces to force them.

02 - ENVIRONMENT DESIGN

Turning a category into a walkable, physical space

Each environment has to translate an abstract organizing idea — a zodiac sign, an element, eventually a season — into something a guest can physically walk into and feel, while still holding multiple independent artists' work as one unified space rather than a row of separate booths.

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THE INSTALLMENTS

Same system, one new category at a time.

PART 01 — BORN UNDER A SIGN · 2022
The original installment

45 local artists, vendors, and performers were each assigned one of the 12 zodiac signs and given a single brief: create or choose a piece that represents it, in any medium, without seeing what anyone else was making until installation day.

Environments

12

Artists, vendors & performers

+ 45

Grouped by

Zodiac sign

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PART 02 — APPLYING THE ELEMENTS · 2023
Same brief, one level up

Evolved the same brief one level up — instead of 12 individual signs, the 45 artists were grouped into 5 elemental categories (Earth, Water, Fire, Air, Ether). Also added a participatory layer: a collaboration with artist Mashell Black on Temporary Mural #13, letting guests contribute their own artwork into the space.

Environments

5

Artists, vendors & performers

+ 45

Grouped by

Element

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PART 03 — SEASONS OF CHANGE · 2026
The next installment

IN DEVELOPMENT

The next test of the same system, organizing artists by season instead of sign or element. Details, environment count, and results will be added once this installment is staged later this year.

Environments

4

Artists, vendors & performers

+ 45

Grouped by

Seasons

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CREATORS

Built and run with Marylin Rini

Zenergies is co-founded and co-led — every environment, brief, and installment is a joint creative decision between the two of us.

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Marylin Rini

Founder & Creative Lead

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Kebin Robin

Co-Founder & Creative Lead

REFLECTION

"The constraint was the curation — connections we didn't have to manufacture by hand."

Giving every artist the same narrow brief, and keeping them blind to what anyone else was making, turned out to do more curatorial work than placing pieces by hand ever could. The cohesion in each environment came from the constraint itself, not from us forcing connections after the fact.

The bigger test was whether that held up as a system rather than a one-off idea. Taking the exact same logic from 12 zodiac signs down to 5 elements — a completely different level of abstraction — and watching it still produce a unified environment is what made this feel like a repeatable model instead of a single good event.

If I were to take this further

Formalize the category-to-environment brief into something another curator could run without Marylin or me directly involved, build a public record of artist contributions across installments so the system's track record is visible on its own, and use Part 03's seasonal category system as the next live test of how far the underlying model generalizes beyond astrology.

Want the full Zenergies experience?

The official site has the current installment, behind-the-scenes, and how to apply as an artist, vendor, or performer.

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