Title: Contemporary Art from Nigeria in International Spaces
Abstract: Art becomes art only after passing through certain institutions with the power to legitimise. As such, Robertson (2005) asserts it has not become art if it fails to appear in an art market conduit. Thornton (2008) describes the art world as a conflicted cluster of subcultures spinning around the auctions, the art fairs, the biennale and museums, which represent Robertson’s conduits. Networks are considered especially useful for exchanging commodities whose value is not easily measurable, such as contemporary art (Yogev and Grund 2012). Due to the popularity and prestige of art fairs and biennials as the most transnational of all art events, visibility at these events has become essential for artists and galleries. As said earlier, contemporary art from Africa attracted no attention from the West before the late 1980s (Cotter 2002) because it was considered an inferior simulation of Western art (Ogbechie 2008). Thus, despite its equivocal curatorial strategy, Jean-Hubert Martin’s Magiciens de la Terre at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, in 1989 has been described as instrumental in bringing contemporary art from Africa to global attention (Okeke-Agulu 2010). Belting (2012) also describes the exhibition as the first mega exhibition to present non-Western art in a global context as contemporary rather than primitive or ethnic art.
Publication Year: 2022
Publication Date: 2022-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
AI Researcher Chatbot
Get quick answers to your questions about the article from our AI researcher chatbot