ABSTRACT
The anthology Challenging Identities invites its contributors to consider notions of individual as well as collective identities with a view to their political implications. The concept of identity deployed here primarily relates to the cultural aspects of identity, and the focus will be on the question of how 'identity' is associated with notions of culture, ethnicity, migration, and globalization in the discourses on contemporary art. Armed with arguments from postcolonial theory and supported by the very real and transformative forces of globalization and migration, discussions about identity politics in the art world have fundamentally transformed the dominant Western conception of the 'international art world' as a club for Westerners only. Globalization means that the major art communities of big cities have plugged into the international urban circuit of the 'global art world'. Of special importance is the 1994 anthology Global Visions: Towards a New Internationalism in the Visual Arts with proceedings from the symposium "A New Internationalism".
