Proposals for art world(s): cultures of care

As artistic/cultural institutions become increasingly global/ international/ transnational in their scope, they are faced with tremendous responsibilities: to collect, preserve, and show the (hidden) multi micro-narratives told by the many who make up the world. Alike speculative realism (Harman, 2018), and while challenging the multipolar Western institutional structures (grand-narratives told by few) that they inhabit (Gupta and Watson, 2016), such responsibilities imply a spirit of imaginative audacity, mutability, and exchange, integrating both human and non-human experiences, knowledge, and stories. Considering the danger of hegemonic absorption of dissonant practices into canonical art historical and curatorial discourses – which would imply the deactivation of conflictual questions that may defy Western notions of quality, influence, originality, work of art vs. artifact etc. –, this project aims to ask: How do the artistic/cultural practices respond to (and, therefore, (ex)change with) the different challenges – curatorial, art historical, educational, but also economic and political – posed by the collection and exhibition of works from a variety of world regions?