Two Publications Examine Chinese Contemporary Art's Global Positioning Through Exhibition Histories
On October 1, 2023, ARTMargins published an essay that examines two significant works regarding the international status of Chinese contemporary art through exhibitions. Franziska Koch's 2016 book, 'Die chinesische Avantgarde und das Dispositiv der Ausstellung,' offers a transcultural analysis of group exhibitions of Chinese art within Western settings. Meanwhile, the 2020 publication 'Uncooperative Contemporaries: Art Exhibitions in Shanghai in 2000' from Afterall Books highlights exhibitions coinciding with China's global emergence, including the inaugural Shanghai biennial. Both texts critique the dynamics between Chinese art and global narratives, questioning universalist views by focusing on specific contexts and transnational connections. This essay is featured in ARTMargins Volume 12, Issue 3, pages 89-101, DOI 10.1162/artm_r_00365, accessible through MIT Press subscription.
Key facts
- The essay reviews two publications on Chinese contemporary art and global exhibition histories.
- Franziska Koch authored a 2016 monograph examining group exhibitions of Chinese art in the West.
- Afterall Books published 'Uncooperative Contemporaries: Art Exhibitions in Shanghai in 2000' in 2020.
- The 2020 volume focuses on exhibitions around China's global turn in 2000, including the first international Shanghai biennial.
- Both works analyze how Chinese art's global relation has been conceptualized across different contexts.
- The publications intervene in universalist discourses of global contemporary art from bottom-up perspectives.
- They conceive global art as plural articulations of a 'disjunctive unity' with multiple contemporaneities.
- The essay was published on October 1, 2023 in ARTMargins Volume 12, Issue 3.
Entities
Institutions
- ARTMargins
- MIT Press
- Afterall Books
Locations
- Shanghai
- China