Graduate Seminar

Binding Agents: Toward an Aesthetic of the Postcolonial in Contemporary Exhibition

Graduate Program in Curatorial Practice
Graduate Program in Fine Arts
California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA
2018, 2019

Bracketed between the first Documenta of the new millennium curated by the first non-Western director, Okwui Enwezor, in 2002, and documenta 15, curated by ruangrupa, in 2022, Binding Agents studied activity in exhibitions and institutions to consider how the North Atlantic contemporary art world has impacted the development of an aesthetics of the postcolonial.

Graduate students were introduced to discourses related to international exhibitions in order to trace situations in art over the past two decades where the postcolonial has been increasingly aestheticized, from work presented at major biennial exhibitions to activity seen at informal arts initiatives. As a group, students were encouraged to gather this material into a synthesized whole to critically assess and seek clarity on the influence of globalization on contemporary art, aesthetics, and exhibition.

Book, Syllabus