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This study focuses on the understanding of art as governmental practices. It researches global and postcolonial – translocal & transcultural – contexts of contemporary artistic and curatorial practices, theoretically and through an in-depth analysis of two case studies: Philadelphia Assembled demonstrates the complicated power dynamics within collaborative artistic practices, while documenta fifteen highlights the many complex challenges that the commons approach, and thus more horizontal forms of knowledge production, bring to the art field.

Reassessing the curatorial discourse of the “New Museology” since the 1990s (Bennett et al.) and incorporating feminist-influenced critiques of representation (Spivak, Haraway) and the concept of governmentality (Foucault), this dissertation introduces the concept of the “post-exhibitionary complex.” Here, exhibitions become active social spaces and contact zones that promote participatory aesthetic formations that stay with (self)critical theory practices. This approach promotes nuanced, networked forms of knowledge production and dissemination grounded in feminist materialism (“Situated Knowledges”).

An analytical toolkit is introduced as a non-comprehensive manual to evaluate exhibitionary projects and their institutional frameworks, focusing on the relationships between art, institutions, and audiences in their governmental and economic contexts.

Overall, the study aims to offer an in-depth analysis of the changing landscape of art and curatorial practices in response to global political and economic shifts, highlighting the importance of transversal and post-exhibitionary approaches.

Ronald Kolb (Stuttgart/Zurich) works as a researcher, designer and curator and is Co-Head of the Postgraduate Program in Curating
at the Zurich University of the Arts as well as editor tof the web journal On-Curating.org.

Photo credit cover image: Setup for the workshop “Mother Maiz” by fffff (hosted by Leah Nehmert, Mariana Murcia and Laurie Mlodzik), 12 May 2022, OnCurating Project Space. Photo: fffff.

Published by OnCurating.org

This publication is mainly based on the dissertation as part of the PhD in Practice in Curating Program, a joint doctoral program of the Zurich University
of the Arts and the University of Reading, supported by “swissuniversities.”

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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The Publisher is granted a non-exclusive right of use with respect to the online publication of the work without the obligation to make use of this right. The Author is entitled to make a PDF version of the work publicly accessible online via his/her personal website, an institutional server or a suitable subject-based  repository once it has appeared in book form. This usage of rights is in compliance to the requirements by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).