The Aesthetics of Exhaustion: Visible Busyness and Hidden Affective Labor in Art Education and Curatorial Practice

This study examines emotional and affective labor in small-scale art spaces in Beijing, London, and New York through ten semi-structured interviews and ethnographic observation. Thematic analysis identified five themes: managed authenticity, atmosphere production, role accumulation, unequal care, and passion as precarious governance. The findings reveal that cultural feeling rules are embedded in professional norms and spatial design rather than formal scripts. Workers create trust and symbolic value, but this labor remains hidden, producing a double aesthetics of exhaustion: visible busyness signals dedication while fatigue must disappear. Similar overwork patterns are justified differently across cities: entrepreneurial visibility in New York, institutional prestige in London, and heritage-based responsibility in Beijing. The study concludes that exhaustion is aesthetically managed and symbolically misrecognized, calling for institutions to recognize emotional care as compensable labor.