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Biennial Boom
Making Contemporary Art Global
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2024
About this book
In Biennial Boom, Paloma Checa-Gismero traces an archeology of contemporary art biennials to uncover the processes that prompted these exhibitions to become the global art world’s defining events at the end of the twentieth century. Returning to the early post-Cold War years, Checa-Gismero examines the early iterations of three well-known biennials at the borders of North Atlantic liberalism: the Bienal de La Habana, inSITE, and Manifesta. She draws on archival and oral history fieldwork in Cuba, Mexico, the US/Mexico borderlands, and the Netherlands, showing how these biennials reflected a post-Cold War optimism for a pacified world by which artistic and knowledge production would help mend social, political, and cultural divisions. Checa-Gismero argues that, in reflecting this optimism, biennials facilitated the conversion of subaltern aesthetic genealogies into forms that were legible to a nascent cosmopolitan global elite—all under the pretense of cultural exchange. By outlining how early biennials set the basis for what is now recognized as “global contemporary art,” Checa-Gismero intervenes in previous accounts of the contemporary art world in order to better understand how it became the exclusionary, rarified institution of today.
Author / Editor information
Paloma Checa-Gismero is Assistant Professor of Art History at Swarthmore College.
Reviews
“Biennials are a definitive—some say, the definitive—exhibitionary form for contemporary art. This is a forensic study of three of the biennials that moved beyond the modern model of art battles between nations, staged at Venice since 1895, into contemporary modes. They laid key markers for the subsequent biennial ‘boom.’ Paloma Checa-Gismero combines archival research, personal experience, a wide-ranging knowledge of critical theory, along with an invigorating intolerance of cliché, to show the collisions between aspiration and reality in play at these times and places. She tracks how artists, critics, curators, and viewers from local communities responded to the ‘aesthetic conversions’ of social forces that these biennials enabled, paving the way for the multi-facetted phenomenon known as ‘global contemporary art.’”
-- Terry Smith, author of Art to Come: Histories of Contemporary Art
“In this erudite, insightful, and immensely readable book Paloma Checa-Gismero puts her finger on how the profound inequality, chauvinism, Eurocentrism, and problematic space of the contemporary art world came into being. While others may wax poetic on contemporary aesthetics without necessarily being aware of the conditions of the art world, Checa-Gismero actually shows what makes contemporary art take on its cultural capital. Biennial Boom makes an important intervention into historicizing and making sense of the global art world.”
-- Tatiana Flores, author of Mexico’s Revolutionary Avant-Gardes: From Estridentismo to ¡30-30!
"Checa-Gismero’s careful consideration of the myriad political, social, and economic shifts of the post–Cold War neoliberal world order positions biennials as critical to the construction of what is referred to as 'global contemporary art,' laying the groundwork for future study. Her study is a significant contribution to the burgeoning field of exhibition histories, through its critical examination of the politics of display. With it, artists and curators can be cognizant of how their work might be operationalized on a global stage, to envision more equitable art worlds."
-- Leah Triplett C Magazine
-- Leah Triplett C Magazine
Topics
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Frontmatter
i -
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Contents
vii -
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List of Illustrations
ix -
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Acknowledgments
xiii -
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Biennial Conversions at the Borders of Liberalism: An Introduction
1 - Part 1 Anticolonial Collaboration in the Bienal de La Habana’s Early Iterations: Havana, 1984–1991
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1 Polyphonic Internationalism
29 -
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2 Curating the Third World
53 -
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3 An Aesthetics of Production
72 - Part 2 Cosmopolitan Dreams at the US-Mexico Borderlands in inSITE94 and INSITE97: San Diego and Tijuana, 1994–1997
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4 Sovereignty Claims over the Borderlands
99 -
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5 Fears of Provincialism and the Desire to Be Global
123 -
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6 Globalizing Mexican Art
146 - Part 3 Art for a Unified Europe: Manifesta 1, Rotterdam, 1996
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7 Manifesta: Placenta Europa
173 -
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8 Curating Conflict
193 -
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9 The Art of Belonging
217 -
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Epilogue
241 -
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Notes
253 -
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Bibliography
285 -
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Index
301
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
July 3, 2024
eBook ISBN:
9781478059486
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook ISBN:
9781478059486
Keywords for this book
art biennials; globalization; global contemporary art; biennial boom; early boom biennials; global exhibitionary complex; artistic hegemony; Julio Leparc; kinetic art; Third World avant-garde; Bienal de La Habana; postrevolutionary Cuba; anti-colonial curating; collaborative labor; non-orthodox Marxism; Cuban art; Craft; indigenismo; popular art; production aesthetics; USMexico borderlands; inSITE; Chicano art; Border art; San Diego; US Mexico borderlands; Terry Allen; Louis Hock; Rubén Ortiz Torres; Border Art WorkshopTaller de arte fronterizo; Marcos Ramírez ERRE; global art industry; cultural tourism; urban renewal; Janet Koenig; Gregory Sholette; Allen Sedula; Andrea Fraser; David Jursit; Thomas Glassford; Melanie Smith; Francis Als; frontera norte; Silvia Gruner; Helen Escobedo; Felipe Ehrenberg; Sofía Táboas; Abraham Cruzvillegas; Eduardo Abaroa; contemporary art production; site-oriented art practice; Manifesta; European integration; European cultural policy; Treaty of Maastricht; Europeanness; Central European art; Eastern European art; relational art; freelance curator; North Atlantic art worlds; Rotterdam; dialogical aesthetics; artistic community; economic globalization; BAD Foundation; NEstWORK; Cold War; art globalization
Audience(s) for this book
For an expert adult audience, including professional development and academic research
