ABSTRACT
The history of exhibitions has become a crucial twenty-first-century field for those interested in contemporary efforts to present ‘renewed’ world visions that grapple with global knowledges, European colonial empires, critical postcolonial studies, alternative art practices, gender and racial concerns, and the deconstruction of hegemonic centres and peripheral realms. Okwui Enwezor (1963–2019) is among the most innovative curators of the last two decades who reworked conceptions of history and culture and questioned from the inside the effect that ‘alternating currents’ have on a globalized art world. By crossing boundaries, he produced shifts between cultural and artistic identities. What he first established for African art later extended to other world cultures, effecting a radical change in how museums conceptualize global knowledge. This coincided with widespread upheaval in predominantly Eurocentric paradigms thanks to institutions offering contemporary artists a platform to present competing interpretations of the past. This chapter examines several of the paramount international art events Enwezor curated in Europe (The Short Century, Munich, 2001; Documenta 11, Kassel, 2002; Seville Biennal, 2007; Triennale, Paris, 2012; Venice Biennal, 2015), in which he sought to entangle European colonial history and contemporary art practices while at the same time combining aesthetics and poetics with politics.
