Abstract
Abstract. There has been a proliferation of contemporary art biennials in
the past 20 years, especially in cities outside of North America and
Europe. What biennials represent to their host cities and what is
represented at these events reveal a great deal about the significance of
this proliferation. The biennial platform entails formalistic notions of
representation with regards to place branding or the selection of artists
as emissaries of countries where they were been born, reside, or to which
they have some kind of affinity. This notion of representation is obscured
considering the instability of center and periphery, artists' biographies,
practices, and references. In contradistinction to the colonial world fair,
the biennial thwarts the notion or possibility of “authentic”
representation. The analysis incorporates works shown at the 2018 biennials
in Dakar and Taipei, interviews with artists, curators, and stakeholders, and materials collected during fieldwork in both cities.
Subject
Earth-Surface Processes,Anthropology,Geography, Planning and Development,Global and Planetary Change
Reference85 articles.
1. Allen, J. R.: Taipei: City of Displacements, Univerosity of Washington
Press, Washington, 2012.
2. Altshuler, B.: Biennials and Beyond: Exhibitions That Made Art History 1962–2002, Phaidon, London, 2013.
3. Amabile, T. M., Patterson, C., Mueller, J., Wojcik, T., Odomirok, P. W.,
Marsh, M., and Kramer, S. J.: Academic-Practitioner Collaboration in Management Research: A Case of Cross-Profession Collaboration, Acad. Manage. J., 44, 418–431, 2001.
4. Anderson, B.: Cultural geography II: The force of representations, Prog. Human Geogr., 43, 1120–1132, 2019.
5. Bain, A. L.: Constructing contemporary artistic identities in Toronto neighbourhoods, The Canadian Geographer/Le Géographe canadien, 47, 303–317, 2003.