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- Volume 9, Issue 1, 2020
Journal of Curatorial Studies - Volume 9, Issue 1, 2020
Volume 9, Issue 1, 2020
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From Obsolete to Contemporary: National Pavilions and the Venice Biennale
More LessAbstractFor over a century, the Venice Biennale and its national pavilions have served as a platform for international artistic display. Despite the fact that national representation has been a pivotal aspect of the Biennale since the first pavilion was built in 1907, there is a lack of deep understanding of the nature of this model. The purpose of this article is to offer an historical account of the conceptual and material predicament of national representation at the Venice Biennale. The focus is directed mainly at the introduction in 1993 of a more transnational approach in the context of an increasingly interconnected and globalized world.
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A Moment to Celebrate? Art of the Caribbean at the Venice Biennale
Authors: Wendy Asquith and Leon WainwrightAbstractIn recent years, the sporadic presence of various Caribbean national pavilions at the Venice Biennale – Jamaica (2001), Haiti (2011), Bahamas (2013), Grenada (2015, 2017, 2019), Antigua and Barbuda (2017, 2019), Dominican Republic (2019) – has on each occasion been almost unanimously applauded as marking some sort of moment of ‘arrival’ or ‘becoming’ for artists of the Caribbean, and for the local institutional structures and professionals that surround them. This article critically explores what the gains are of such a presence beyond the fleeting ‘Venice effect’ – mega-hyped exposure to international audiences, curators, gallerists and other market actors. The alleged benefits-for-all of contemporary cultural exchange, in an expanding globalizing field such as Venice, are by no means shared equally, and such discourses gloss over layers of uneven privilege embedded within the institution.
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India at the Venice Biennale: Collateral Events From and Beyond the Nation
By Nuria QuerolAbstractiCon: India Contemporary (2005) was not only the first collateral event of India at the Venice Biennale, but it also began as a bid to become a national pavilion – an ambition that was ultimately unsuccessful. Drawing on original research and interview data surrounding the exhibition, this article examines the collaborations and conflicts between private art institutions, artists and the state in the context of India’s participation in the Venice Biennale since the 2000s. The article foregrounds a transversal approach – that is, an analytical framework that unsettles the conventional dichotomy between national pavilions and collateral events – and demonstrates how commercial galleries and private art institutions have acquired an important role in the production and exhibition of Indian contemporary art in global biennial circuits.
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Possessing Nature: The Mexican Pavilion as a Site of Critical Analysis
More LessAbstractThis article examines the complexities of sustaining a critical curatorial approach in the context of the national pavilions at the Venice Biennale. It discusses Possessing Nature, the 2015 Mexican pavilion, from the author’s insider perspective as Project Coordinator. Curated by Karla Jasso, the exhibition presented an installation by Tania Candiani and Luis Felipe Ortega, and was conceived as a site of critical analysis focused on Venice’s and Mexico City’s environmental crises. This case study sheds light on the contradictory politics of the Biennale by exploring the challenges of introducing an experimental approach to mediation and of constructing the exhibition as a site of active research.
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Torchlight, Winckelmann and Early Australian Collections
More LessAbstractMid-nineteenth-century Melbourne wanted to be more than a British outpost in southern Australia. Before its second decade, in 1854, the city founded an impressive museum-library-gallery complex. As European museums developed cast collections, Redmond Barry – Melbourne’s chief patron – filled Melbourne’s halls with a considerable selection. With time, these casts were discarded. The now lost collection seldom receives more than a passing remark in scholarship. However, these early displays in (what would become) the National Gallery of Victoria reimagined European Winckelmann-inspired curatorial models. The resulting experience made viewing into a performative action of nascent civic identity. Considered within current practice, Melbourne’s casts expose the implications of curatorial ideology.
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Winner of the 2020 Journal of Curatorial Studies Emerging Writer Award
More LessAbstractWinner of the 2020 Journal of Curatorial Studies Emerging Writer Award
Tear Gas Epiphanies: Protest, Culture, Museums, Kirsty Robertson
Toronto/Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press (2019), 432 pp.,
ISBN 978-0-77355-701-7, p/bk, CAD $39.95
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