The Routes of Modernism

Active Withdrawals: Life and Death of Institutional Critique, 2016

The collapse of the bi-­-polar world order with the demise of the Berlin Wall has triggered a previously uncharted cartography of the art world. The incorporation of the newly emerging contemporary art contexts into the globalized art scene, which operates on the claim of democratizing the art system and absorbing yet "undiscovered" cultural territories, has arguably followed the trajectory of neo-­-liberal economics. The newly discovered art worlds for the increasingly globalizing art system have been those with natural resources, financial markets and geopolitical currencies. This economic and cultural expansion has been often coupled with the post 9/11 Bush doctrine that hails negative liberty as a positive notion by coercively imposing "freedom" onto various post-­-colonial contexts formerly aligned with one of the Cold War vectors of power. We can call these contexts post-­-peripheries since with globalization and increasing transnationalization of capital, the age-­-old center-­-periphery distinction is no longer viable. However, this does not mean that peripheries are extinct, but rather this suggests that power itself is dispersed to the extent that it becomes intangible. Dispersion and fragmentation of power and the subsequent complexity of center-­-periphery distinctions mask the real operation of capital that is always a totality. I define post-­-peripheries as discursive, geographic and cultural spaces that can and do exist in traditional centers of power and not only in the formerly colonized territories: increasing marginalization of the working classes and the structural exclusion of the unemployed from social life in the UK and the US post 1980s is one example of a post-­-periphery. Post-­-peripheries are those spaces and discourses wherein technologies and techniques developed in the center are consumed rather than produce. But these can also be consumed subversively, by misuse or misappropriation. Transnational art events such as biennales and festivals structurally reproduce the characteristics of the post-­-periphery: the means of representation and the discursive tropes emanate from the center, yet these are used and consumed in other geographies sometimes with conformism and at other times critically and subversively. Geographically dispersed and varied, transnational art events often promote a mobile cast of cultural workers and artists with repeated appearances in Gwangju, Sharjah, São Paolo, Istanbul and Dubai sequentially or at time synchronically. What the political and cultural geographies of various post-­-peripheries share is the ways in which the globalized art scene has constructed the notion of the art event which in turn relies on the

MIgratory Politics. Technology, Time, Performativity, 2007

This text studies the way in which mobility politics operate within what is known as the international contemporary art system, that is, within the context of the economic, symbolic, and transcultural fabric devised by the new international biennials, the translocal net of galleries, new cultural institutions, museums, specialized foundations and boards of trustees, as well as through the internationalization process of contemporary art that took place over the past few decades. Our goal is to describe, on one hand, the most relevant consequences of the epistemological turn that mobility has taken in the process of production, circulation and reception of contemporary art on a global level and on the other, to criticize the multiculturalist and internationalist discourse of the global exhibition system.

The Moving Image Review & Art Journal (MIRAJ), 2017

Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Design History and Design Studies, 2016

This panel examines the entanglements of design with political processes of decolonization and nation-building post-1945. It presents three historical case studies that cut across different fields of design and compares disparate postcolonial contexts. The three papers critically analyse the role of design discourses, practices, artefacts and institutions in postcolonial identity formations. The first looks at graphic design in the context of 1960s Beirut and, by extension, the Arab East at a tumultuous global moment to probe design's role in articulating transnational political subjectivities and aesthetic sensibilities. The second investigates the architectural discourse of the Commonwealth Institute in London and associated exhibition displays, where ideas about modernity, national identity and transnational relationships were formed and communicated during Britain's turn from Empire. The third considers the ways in which fashion and textiles were utilised in the construction of a modern Jamaican national identity, negotiating notions of race, class and gender to come to terms with a colonial history. Through these three papers, the panel aims to contribute to current debates in design history about the circulation of design beyond Euro-American geographies of modernism and frameworks of knowledge.

ARTMargins, 2023

When taken as a conglomerate, the postcolonial, the global, and the decolonial might signal a coordinated “decolonizing” action—one of breaking with the Eurocentric, patriarchal, and nationalist foundations of art history. Yet from a disaggregating perspective, these three terms and their respective domains cannot be seen as synonymous or entirely harmonious. What particularly demands scrutiny is the tendency to dismiss the postcolonial, or announce its demise, by claiming it has been superseded by other paradigms, namely the global and the decolonial. This introductory essay seeks to trace the postcolonial, global, and decolonial as they have intersected with scholarship in art history over the past five decades, and to challenge postcolonialism’s presumed obsolescence in the wake of the global turn. Postcolonial thought, we argue, has given rise to a generative series of critical interventions in art history at least since the 1970s and 1980s, and has proven to be nuanced and self-reflexive. Postcolonial lines of inquiry not only continue to offer ways of critically exploring colonial-era and subsequent artistic practices, but also allow for interrogations of formations of art and the discipline of art history as colonial forms of knowledge. As such, postcolonialism still vitalizes debates within the discipline regarding the constitution of its own objects, lineaments, and methods.

Humanities Research, 2009

Decentring the Avant-Garde, 2014

The growing disjuncture between the diversity of art practices and the narrow focus of canonical art histories has prompted art historians to pronounce the death of art history. And yet very little has changed because the modernist canon still dominates global art. The western avant-garde continues to be a closed discourse, writing the art of Asia, Africa and Latin America out of art history. Marginalization of non-western art is explained in terms of its 'derivativeness'. And yet there have been significant developments in non-western art since the 20 th century, many of its artists engaged in creating vital modernist expressions of cultural resistance to colonialism. We need to probe more closely the epistemological framework that fuels the 'universalist' claims of the western canon. Even though western avant-garde has inspired the rest of the world, it is still dominated by the universalism that creates asymmetrical relations between the centre and the peripheries, which is not one of geography but of power and authority, with modernism creating its own tacit exclusions and inclusions. Hence borrowings of primitive art by western artists such as Picasso are judged as mere affinities, unlike the use of the syntax of cubism by non-western artists, which is seen as the influence of the West. This paper proposes certain strategies for 'decentring' the dominant canon. An inflected narrative of global modernity offers us a possible way of restoring the artist's agency in the context of colonial empires, by analysing art practices and reception as a cultural document that is historically situated.

I shall mainly reflect on the migration from periphery to the centre, more precisely, on how ‘peripheral' artists are represented in the ‘centre'. Even though not all peripheral artists are de facto migrants, such a comparison seems adequate for several reasons. First, Western art institutions, biennales, and fairs doubtlessly still define the centre of the ‘international' art market, which is why artists coming from the periphery of the Western world - such as Eastern Europe, or so-called third countries - are constructed as migrants. They need to travel to the centre in order to make ‘an international' career. However, spatial travel is not the only trait which allows us to draw a parallel between peripheral artists and migrants. Peripheral artists are similar to migrants in a way to play a role of mimicry (Homi Bhabha), they are to be a site of double articulation: belonging to the periphery but acquainted with and playing by the rules of the centre. Furthermore, ‘artist' and ‘migrant, when understood as cultural signs, are believed to share a common structure: both are believed to be translational and transnational.

Culturas visuales indígenas y las prácticas estéticas en las Américas desde la antigüedad hasta el presente, 2019

Debates on the era of globalization, postcolonial critique, and the Anthropocene have urged scholars working in the elds of Art History and Visual Culture to develop sharper analytical tools and new de nitions for the study of art, artistic productions, and artifacts. With the 'global turn', Western distinctions between art and crafts, European notions of the exceptionality of the usually male artist, and universal concepts of art were no longer considered to have su cient explanatory potential or considered convincing in their exclusiveness (Elkins 2007; Juneja 2018). e need for new conceptualizations was and is pertinent not only to the eld of the contemporary, with its apparently globalized exhibition cultures and art markets, but also to modern art, driven by recent insights in the plural history of modernity or Modernisms across the globe (Eisenstadt 2000; Juneja 2017). ey are also needed in larger historical perspectives as well as in discussions on cultural heritage. e concept of 'aesthetic practices' has been promoted as a heuristic tool to overcome some of the shortcomings of highly elaborate, analytically strong, but often Western-centered art history. e term and concept of 'aesthetic practices' has been tested in a series of scholarly debates and in several case studies conducted by colleagues from a variety of disciplinary specializations, research areas, and art histories in a collaborative research program of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz and the Forum Transregionale Studien called "Art Histories and Aesthetic Practices" 1 co-directed by the author of these lines. is 1 I would like to thank the scholars at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and the Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz for their willingness to engage in critical discussions and for a productive collaboration over several years. e collaborative program "Art Histories and Aesthetic Practices" (2013-2019) included more than fty scholars from various disciplines. e project was funded by the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung. I am extremely grateful for this support. I wish to thank also Georges Khalil for many discussions, Joachim Nettelbeck for his initiative, and Gerhard Wolf for continuous exchange and collaboration. My particular thanks go to the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut, Barbara Göbel, and Iken Paap.

Translocated Modernisms: Paris and Other Lost Generations, ed. Marta Dvořák, Dean Irvine, and Emily Ballantyne, Ottawa: Ottawa UP: 1-19 , 2016

This is the pre-publication version of the introduction to Translocated Modernisms, a volume devoted to modernism's transnational dispersion of aesthetic practices across multiple locations and periods. It engages with the role Paris played as the intersection where identities and practices collide, and focuses on expatriate modernists ranging from Katherine Mansfield, Morley Callaghan, Malcolm Lowry, and Mavis Gallant to Sheila Watson, Brion Gysin, and John Glassco.