Abstract
Art collectives come into existence for many reasons, whether to collaborate on art making or to generate a space for contemporary art outside of the established channels of exhibition and the art market. These efforts have been captured in recent exhibitions such as The Ungovernables, organized by the New Museum in 2012; Six Lines of Flight, which was launched at SFMOMA in 2013; and Cosmopolis I, organized by the Centre Pompidou in 2017. Artist collectives have received some scholarly attention, primarily as producers of artworks, but their exhibition-making practices have not been explored. Some of the collectives included in these exhibitions have also been very involved in exhibition making themselves. The Indonesian art collective ruangrupa was selected to curate the 2022 edition of documenta. This selection emerges not only from their participation in international biennials and their own exhibition practice in Jakarta—including the organization of regular exhibitions, workshops and film screenings at their compound—but also more ambitions events such as Jakarta 32 °C, a festival of contemporary art and media (2004–2014), or O.K. Video (2006–2018). Another group, the Raqs Media Collective, based in Delhi, curated the Shanghai Bienniale in 2016 and the Yokohama Trienniale in 2020. This paper will connect the local and the global through an examination of art collectives’ community-based work in their own cities, and the way it translates into global art events.
Highlights
Another point of agreement consists in the fact that the majority of these shows [biennials] emphasize the internationalist nature of cultural and artistic production
This study seeks to open up new territory in our understanding of the transnational dynamics in the art world by addressing the recent selection of art collectives from the Global South (Raqs Media Collective and ruangrupa) to curate major international biennial/triennial/quintennial exhibitions (Shanghai Biennale, Yokohama Triennale, and documenta)
This epigraph from Carlos Basualdo, who participated as a co-curator of both documenta and the Venice Biennale early in the 21st century, underlines the central dynamics to be explored in this essay: how biennial exhibitions place the internationalism of cultural production in dispute, and how that might be interpreted by curatorial collectives from formerly colonized countries
Summary
Another point of agreement consists in the fact that the majority of these shows [biennials] emphasize the internationalist nature of cultural and artistic production This is not a question of sharing a unified vision, rather of considering international as a term literally in dispute, capable of being interpreted in highly diverse ways. This paper will explore some of the underlying assumptions of global art exhibitions, how uneven geographical development in the art world is manifest there, and whether the mechanisms of the art world can challenge the power structures that it subtends This epigraph from Carlos Basualdo, who participated as a co-curator of both documenta and the Venice Biennale early in the 21st century, underlines the central dynamics to be explored in this essay: how biennial exhibitions place the internationalism of cultural production in dispute, and how that might be interpreted by curatorial collectives from formerly colonized countries. Raqs Media Collective and ruangrupa as curators of exhibitions and biennials in their own localities and abroad
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