ABSTRACT
Can international group exhibitions offer modes of horizontal art history? For much of the contemporary post-1989 period, this particular type of exhibition – dominated by such large international exhibitions as biennials and triennials – has been roundly demonised for its neoliberal bloat, spectacle and dependency on the attention of the neocolonial North Atlantic art market. In this chapter, the author takes a more nuanced approach to these exhibitions, however, by suggesting that they might, indeed, offer not only instances of horizontal art histories – bringing North Atlantic canons and “peripheral” contexts into an encounter, conflict and mutual transformation – but methods for practising horizontal art histories. Central to this argument is how we contextualise and intersect the specific histories and practices of distinct localities through a medium, the exhibition, that is especially vulnerable to decontextualisation even as it emblematises intercultural dialogue. Following analysis of the landmark 1989 Paris exhibition Magiciens de la Terre, this chapter focuses on two particular exhibitions – P_A_U_S_E at the 2002 Gwangju Biennale and NIRIN, the 2020 Biennale of Sydney – and their curatorial innovations for reimagining contextualisation, adjacency and “histories otherwise” within the translocal dialogues of international exhibition-making.
