What Is Global Contemporary Art?

Winter 2024

Coordinated by Louis-Philippe Savard, MA student

This small exhibition is derived from the Fall 2023 MA seminar ARTH 643 Art and Globalization: Global Contemporary Art. The class allowed students to engage with a variety of authors, theories, and artworks, particularly those of women artists of colour. Over the course of the term, we came to realize that the idea of "global contemporary art" is an uneasy one, often disputed and, at times, contradictory. Our discussions guided us to interrogate this very notion as an art historical framework, but also what such a methodological lens requires in terms of a critical and political engagement with the more pressing transnational issues of our times. Ongoing colonial power imbalances, anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism, labour and other abuses from the globalized capitalist system, social and gendered inequalities, as well as the overarching question of privilege, which crucially still determines who gets to tell the stories that are exhibited and recounted within the public sphere and who has access to exhibition spaces.

This vitrine thus proposes a response to the central question around which our reflections revolved: What is global contemporary art? However, this prompt appeals to another underlying, pivotal question... Int he words of Monica Juneja (2023): "Can art history be made global?" Without trying to provide a definitive answer to these inquiries, the present display offers a visual and textural reflection based on the seminar's themes. Composed of excerpts from (some of) our final papers and their respective case studies, it aims at generating thoughts and interrogations as to what it means to address the idea of the global in art and art history. In this light, the initial question appears not so much as a question longing for an answer, but as an invitation to reflect upon what it means to be in this world, at this time.