Globalization and New Art Poles (1980s–2010s) - Lessons 16 to 22
How has contemporary art been reshaping global narratives after imperialism? This module foregrounds marginalized voices across Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific, focusing on socially engaged practices, contested memories, and artistic efforts to rethink history and identity.
This module investigates contemporary art in a globalized world, emphasizing voices and practices historically marginalized by colonial and imperial narratives. It examines socially engaged art in Europe and the U.S., contested memories in post-socialist Europe, and artistic responses to post-apartheid and politically turbulent contexts in Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, and West Asia. The module also highlights Latin American democratic transitions through indigenous reclamation and political commentary, East Asia’s artistic repositioning within global circuits, and Aboriginal and Pacific cosmologies as critical interventions in global art histories.
Course Lessons
Mar 14, 2026 at 2:00PM GMT+1
From Mass Culture to Social Practices at the Turn of the Century in Europe and the US
At the turn of the twenty-first century, artists reimagined art’s role, turning archives, participation, and new media into tools for questioning visibility, authorship, and the politics of collaboration and representation.
Mar 21, 2026 at 2:00PM GMT+1
Contested Memories and Contemporary Languages in Central and Eastern Europe in the Post-Socialist Transition (1989–2010)
Between 1989 and 2010, artists across Central and Eastern Europe turned memory and critique into artistic method, revisiting socialism’s afterlives and democracy’s fragile promises through irony, intimacy, and dissent.
Mar 25, 2026 at 5:00PM GMT+1
Art and Post- Independence Subjectivities from Africa
From 1990 to 2010, artists connected to Africa navigated the rise of the internet, globalisation, and renewed forms of imperial influence. Their practices—ranging from Afro-feminist expression to critiques of identity tropes, decolonial pedagogies, and post-liberation disillusionment—reframed how freedom, memory, and belonging could be visualized.
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Mar 28, 2025 at 2:00PM GMT+1
Histories Without Footnotes: Contemporary Art in Southeast Asia
Artists across South and Southeast Asia have turned to memory, storytelling, and embodied research to confront historical erasure, transforming the absence of archives into spaces of testimony, critique, and creative reconstruction.
Apr 4, 2026 at 1:00PM GMT+2
Post 1980s- intercultural, transhistorical, and politically situated art in Latinx America
During periods of democratic crisis and transition, Latin American artists developed new visual languages for democracy, redefining the body as a site of truth and dissent through the use of performance and the reclamation of suppressed histories. This lesson examines how art served as both testimony and transformation, with gestures, materials, and spaces expressing a politics of renewal that remains relevant today.
Apr 8, 2026 at 4:00PM GMT+2
Artistic Transformations and Global Repositioning in East Asia
From Minjung Art to pop surrealism, artists across Korea, China, and Japan reimagined culture amid rapid change, transforming politics, technology, and mass media into arenas for critique, irony, and radical self-expression.
Apr 11, 2026 at 1:00PM GMT+2
Indigenous Art and Pacific Cosmologies
Across Australia and the Pacific, Indigenous artists transform art into a living archive, linking land, memory, and ancestry while confronting colonial histories and reimagining identity in a global world.
Professors
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Curator, art critic, and theorist
Nicolas Bourriaud
Nicolas Bourriaud is a curator, art critic, and theorist internationally recognized for shaping contemporary art discourse. He is best known for developing the concept of Relational Aesthetics in the 1990s, published in 1998, which has had a lasting impact on global artistic practice. A prolific writer and curator for major art institutions, he continues to influence debates on globalization, cultural hybridity, and the role of art in society.
Art historian, curator, writer, and critic
Anda Rottenberg
Anna Rottenberg is a prominent art historian, curator, writer, and critic, renowned for her significant contributions to the development of contemporary art in Poland. A prolific writer, Rottenborg has been recognized for her critical engagement with art and her commitment to fostering a deeper understanding of Polish and Central European artistic practices.
Curator of Global Africa at the Royal Ontario Museum
Tandazani Dhlakama
Tandazani Dhlakama is now Curator of Global Africa at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), Toronto. Through her work, Dhlakama explores the complex and interconnected histories of African art and the African diaspora, amplifying marginalized voices, interrogating identity, memory and heritage, and reimagining museum narratives to reflect global and diasporic perspectives.
Curator, art researcher, and writer
Đỗ Tường Linh
Đỗ Tường Linh is a curator, art researcher, and writer based between Hanoi (Vietnam) and New York City (United States). Part of the team of the 2th Berlin Biennial, she has engaged in various exhibitions and research projects across Vietnam, Southeast Asia, Europe, and beyond since 2005. Her work expands on themes of post‑colonial identity, and the re‑mapping of Vietnamese and Southeast Asian contemporary art within global art discourses.
Art historian and curator
Cecilia Fajardo-Hill
Cecilia Fajardo-Hill is an art historian and curator in modern and contemporary art. Her work focuses on Latin American and Latinx art, developing a decolonial art history project focused on gender, ethnicity, indigeneity, African heritage, and popular culture. She has held research fellowships at Princeton, the Clark Art Institute, Harvard, and UCLA, and is now Associate Professor of Museum Studies and Art History and Director of Northlight Gallery at Arizona State University.
Chinese‑art curator and writer
Pauline J. Yao
Pauline J. Yao is a curator and writer specializing in contemporary Chinese and Asian art. She co-founded the Beijing-based artist-run space Arrow Factory and has held curatorial positions at the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, and M+ in Hong Kong. Her work focuses on building cross-cultural museum collections and supporting critical artistic networks.
Associate Professor, curator, and researcher
Caroline Vercoe
Caroline Vercoe is an Associate Professor in the Department of Art History at the University of Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. Actively involved in teaching, curating, and researching, she specializes in contemporary Pacific art and performance, with a particular focus on issues of race, gender, and representation.
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