Decolonial aestheSis asks why Western aesthetic categories like ‘beauty’ or ‘representation’ have come to dominate all discussion of art and its value, and how those categories organise the way we think of ourselves and others: as white or black, high or low, strong or weak, good or evil. And decolonial art (or literature, architecture, and so on) enacts these critiques, using techniques like juxtaposition, parody, or simple disobedience to the rules of art and polite society, to expose the contradictions of coloniality. Its goal, then, is not to produce feelings of beauty or sublimity, but ones of sadness, indignation, repentance, hope, and determination to change things in the future.
I This dossier is one more step of the journey that began toward the end of 2009/beginning of 2010, and that already has roads planned into the future. The idea of this dossier, however, emerged in Middelburg, The Netherlands, … Continue reading “Decolonial AestheSis: Colonial Wounds/Decolonial Healings”
In this dossier we look at the geopolitics of sensing, knowing and believing that have been at play in the variegated versions of the project decolonial aestheSis. The participants are intellectuals, curators and artist and many of them all at … Continue reading “The Decolonial AestheSis Dossier”
In locales where the resources are scarce and the imperial-colonial configurations more complicated than in the West-East or North-South dichotomies, the politics of physical survival and the politics of servility towards the criminal state unfortunately dominate. There are no recipes … Continue reading “The Observatory of the Bereaved: Unbinding the Imaginary in Eurasian Borderlands”
Three years ago, in the summer of 2010 I began a series of projects for Documenta 13 as part of the artists’ initiative called AND AND AND. On the one hand, these contributions focused on my Phantom Limbs and Twin … Continue reading “Propositions for a Decolonial Aesthetics and "Five Decolonial Days in Kassel" (Documenta 13 AND AND AND)”
The conceptualization of decolonial aesthetics[i] is fairly recent, however its points of departure — the epistemic shifts that have been challenging coloniality in the artistic and cultural practices of the Global South — are as old as the colonial … Continue reading “Black Europe Body Politics: Towards an Afropean Decolonial Aesthetics”
The postcommunist transition has been characterized in Eastern Europe by the return and rearticulation of capitalism and coloniality in this region of the world. Seen from Eastern Europe, the postcommunist transition can be understood as the top-to-bottom integration of East … Continue reading “Decolonial AestheSis in Eastern Europe: Potential Paths of Liberation”
Introduction by Walter Mignolo Tanja Ostojić? And what is decolonially aestheSis in her work? Simply, Tanja’s work unveils the logic of coloniality through the intersectionality of the European Union’s politics of migration, gender, and sexuality. When Rolando and I invited … Continue reading “Crossing Borders / Development of Diverse Artistic Strategies”
The Panama Canal, completed in 1914, creates a borderland of North and South. The nation of Panamá was invented by it, a consequence of centuries of Spanish occupation and US imperialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The canal initiated … Continue reading “Flow”
The Biennial Statement The written curatorial statement from the organizing committee of the 11th Havana Biennial arrived via email the same day that we were preparing a dossier for the Romanian magazine IDEA. As we put together a brief … Continue reading “Decolonial AestheSis at the 11th Havana Biennial”
Hong Kong cinema has been in a state of ambivalence for a long time despite the fact that it has always been so unambivalently commercialized. This is less a cause than a consequence of the fissured condition of cultural production … Continue reading “Decolonial Moments in Hong Kong Cinema”
LOOKING BACK — The Decolonial Aesthetics Exhibition at Duke University The Decolonial Aesthetics Exhibition (May 4-June 5, 2011) at Duke University’s Fredric Jameson Gallery and The Nasher Museum of Art, among other venues, curated installations by scholar-artists Guo-Juin Hong … Continue reading “What/Where is "Decolonial Asia"?”
How do decolonial aestheSis accord with but also depart from a “post-” sensibility, be it modern, structural, or, perhaps, even colonial? Édouard Glissant is instructive in this respect, when he comments upon the metropolitan poststructural heritage as a French citizen … Continue reading “Be.Bop 2012. Black Europe Body Politics”
I always ask my students, grad and undergraduate, for the mid-term “exam”, to write a letter to whomever they wish. It should be an educated person who is a little bit familiar with the topic, or not necessarily. The question … Continue reading “Decolonial Aesthesis: From Singapore, To Cambridge, To Duke University”
