Curating ‘global contemporary art’

The Third Havana Biennial 1989

The third edition of the Bienal de La Habana took place in 1989, and interrogates the ways in which this exhibition extended the global territory of contemporary art and redefined the biennial model.

‘Magiciens de la Terre’ 1989

An exhibition that united the work of over a hundred artists and which, since only half would be described as Western, radically challenged the Western art system from within. ‘Magiciens de la Terre’ argued for the universality of the creative impulse and endeavoured to offer direct aesthetic experience of contemporary works of art made globally and presented on equal terms.

The 24th Bienal de São Paolo, 1998

The 1998 Bienal de São Paulo remade art history from a Brazilian perspective, and presented a new model for exhibition-making in the era of post-colonial globalisation. The show employed the Brazilian notion of anthropophagy as both concept and method, encouraging ‘contamination’ and ‘cannibalisation’ of the canon, alongside an expanded understanding of its pedagogic function for the integration of art, culture and political history.

FESTAC ’77: The 2nd World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture

Early in 1977, thousands of artists, writers, musicians, activists and scholars from Africa and the black diaspora assembled in Lagos for FESTAC ’77, the 2nd World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture. With a radically ambitious agenda underwritten by Nigeria’s newfound oil wealth, FESTAC ’77 would unfold as a complex, glorious and excessive culmination of a half-century of transatlantic and pan-Africanist cultural-political gatherings.

Art Exhibitions in Shanghai in 2000

Shanghai’s ‘exhibition frenzy’ in 2000 presented conflicting positions at a transitional moment for ‘global’ contemporary art. Landmark artist-led initiatives, public interventions and commercial initiatives took place alongside the state-led Shanghai Biennale, then in its third edition, raising questions on modernity, contemporaneity, nationalism, internationalism and globalism, and wider changes in the art field.