Postcolonial art

Postcolonial art
Name	Postcolonial art
Origin	Global decolonization movements
Period	20th–21st century

Postcolonial art is an umbrella term for visual, performative, and literary arts that respond to the histories and aftermaths of colonialism, occupation, and empire. It encompasses practices by artists from formerly colonized regions and diasporas who engage with legacies of extraction, migration, and cultural exchange while interacting with museums, biennials, and archives. Practitioners often negotiate issues of representation, restitution, and identity in relation to nation-states, transnational institutions, and global markets.

Definition and Origins

The origins of this field trace to decolonization waves after World War II that involved actors such as Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, Sukarno, Ho Chi Minh, and Gamal Abdel Nasser and concomitant cultural movements in cities like Paris, London, Lagos, Dakar, Accra, New York, Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Dhaka, Singapore, Jakarta, Hanoi, Beirut, Cairo, Casablanca, Algiers, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Harare, Addis Ababa, Nairobi, Kigali, Kinshasa, Lima, Bogotá, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Havana, Kingston, Port-au-Prince, Toronto, Montreal, Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, Seoul, Tokyo, Taipei, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beirut's artistic networks. Early influencers include institutions and events such as the United Nations, the Non-Aligned Movement, the Festival of Negro Arts, the Salon des Indépendants, the Venice Biennale, the Documenta exhibitions, and national galleries like the Tate Modern, the British Museum, the Musée du Louvre, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Pompidou Centre, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Key early practitioners and theorists associated with anti-colonial modernisms and cultural nationalism include figures connected to Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Homi K. Bhabha, Stuart Hall, Amílcar Cabral, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Aime Cesaire and artists linked to Ben Enwonwu, F. N. Souza, Rasheed Araeen, Yinka Shonibare, El Anatsui, Walid Raad, Shirin Neshat, Zarina Hashmi, Ghassan Kanafani, León Ferrari, Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Wifredo Lam, Tarsila do Amaral and institutions like the Africa Centre.

Historical Context and Colonial Legacies

Colonial legacies referenced in artworks draw upon events and treaties such as the Berlin Conference (1884–85), the Treaty of Tordesillas, the Treaty of Versailles, the Treaty of Paris (1814), the Sykes–Picot Agreement, the Partition of India, the Anglo-Zulu War, the Boer Wars, the Opium Wars, the Scramble for Africa, the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, the Conquest of Peru, the Taiping Rebellion, the First Opium War, the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the Sepoy Mutiny and campaigns like the Scramble for Africa. Colonial administrations such as the British Empire, French colonial empire, Dutch East India Company, Portuguese Empire, Spanish Empire, Belgian Congo, German colonial empire, Ottoman Empire and events like Indonesian National Revolution inform narratives. Responses engage with archives including records from the East India Company, the Royal African Company, the Colonial Office, the League of Nations Mandates, and exhibitions such as the Great Exhibition, the Colonial and Indian Exhibition (1886), and the Exposition Universelle. Iconic episodes and legal frameworks like the Atlantic slave trade, the Middle Passage, Emancipation Proclamation, the Abolition of Slavery, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and the Indian Independence Act 1947 are frequent referents.

Themes and Aesthetics

Artists negotiate themes of memory, diaspora, hybridity, sovereignty, trauma, and reparations through aesthetic strategies linked to movements and figures such as Modernism, Surrealism, Cubism, Constructivism, Dada, Symbolism, Negritude, Afrocentrism, Pan-Africanism, Indigenismo, Muralism, Socialist Realism, Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism and contemporary networks around the Whitney Biennial, the Serpentine Galleries, the Royal Academy of Arts, the São Paulo Biennial, the Sharjah Biennial, the Istanbul Biennial, the Documenta 14, the Kadist Art Foundation, the Prince Claus Fund, the Asia Art Archive and the Ford Foundation. Formal tactics include assemblage used by Robert Rauschenberg, appropriation famously practiced by Andy Warhol, collage as by Hannah Höch, performance as by Marina Abramović, photo-text strategies used by Sophie Calle, and archival interventions like those by Walid Raad and Sam Durant. Iconography often references national heroes and moments such as Mahatma Gandhi, Simón Bolívar, Toussaint Louverture, José Martí, Che Guevara, Marcus Garvey, Patrice Lumumba, Nelson Mandela, Rosa Luxemburg, Subhas Chandra Bose, Ho Chi Minh, Kwame Nkrumah, Amílcar Cabral, Emiliano Zapata and symbols like the Union Jack, the Tricolore, the Stars and Stripes, the Red Flag, the Sickle and Hammer and regional motifs from Maasai, Aztec, Inca, Maya, Ghanaian kente, Ndebele, Sami, Aboriginal Australian, Māori and Ainu visual cultures.

Regional Traditions and Case Studies

Regional strands map to particular histories: West African practices (e.g. Nok culture, Benin Kingdom, Asante, Ifẹ̀) and artists like El Anatsui, Kudzanai Chiurai, Yinka Shonibare; North African and Middle Eastern practices with references to Algerian War of Independence, Palestinian resistance and artists such as Mona Hatoum, Khaled Jarrar, Emily Jacir, Shirin Neshat; South Asian currents involving Partition of India, Bengal Renaissance, and artists like Rasheed Araeen, Anish Kapoor, Subodh Gupta, Nalini Malani; Southeast Asian scenes with Suharto, Vietnam War, Philippine Revolution and artists like Raden Saleh, Jose Tence Ruiz, Lee Wen; Latin American traditions linked to Mexican Revolution, Cuban Revolution, Operation Condor and figures such as Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Tarsila do Amaral, Fernando Botero, Beatriz González; Oceania practices with references to Treaty of Waitangi and artists like Ralph Hotere, Lisa Reihana, Lina Viste Grønli; diasporic European networks in London, Paris, Berlin, Brussels, Amsterdam and institutions like the Institute of Contemporary Arts.

Media, Techniques, and Institutional Practices

Media include painting, sculpture, installation, film, video, photography, performance, sound art, textile practices, printmaking, public art, curatorial projects, community art and digital media deployed by artists associated with spaces such as the Stedelijk Museum, Rijksmuseum, Guggenheim Bilbao, National Museum of Anthropology (Mexico City), Zeitz MOCAA, Tate Modern, Institut du Monde Arabe and artist-run collectives like Tala Madani Collective and archives including the British Library, the National Archives (UK), the Archives nationales (France), the Smithsonian Institution Archives, the African Studies Centre (Leiden), the South Asian American Digital Archive and the Digital Public Library of America. Curatorial initiatives and legal debates involve actors such as Okwui Enwezor, Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, Theaster Gates, Catherine David, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Dieter Roelstraete, Hou Hanru, Claudio Magris, and restitution cases involving the Benin Bronzes, claims against the British Museum, negotiations with the Museo del Prado, the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the Getty Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and recent legislative attention such as in the French law on colonial archives.

Politics, Identity, and Activism

Artistic practice frequently intersects with political movements and actors like Black Lives Matter, Movement for Black Lives, Landless Workers' Movement (MST), Zapatista Army of National Liberation, ANC, Pan-African Congress, Non-Aligned Movement, World Social Forum, Libération des territoires, Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, African Union, CARICOM, ASEAN and campaigns for cultural restitution involving Ken Saro-Wiwa, Wole Soyinka, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and activists such as Angela Davis, bell hooks, Stuart Hall. Intersectional debates engage feminists and decolonial theorists like Gloria Anzaldúa, Patricia Hill Collins, Leela Gandhi, Achille Mbembe and institutions like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch when artworks address refugees, migration crises, and gender-based violence.

Reception, Criticism, and Global Markets

Reception occurs across critics, curators, collectors, and markets anchored by actors and venues such as Christie's, Sotheby's, Art Basel, Frieze Art Fair, FIAC, TEFAF, the Venice Biennale, the Guggenheim, the Tate Modern, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Haus der Kunst, MoMA PS1, Serralves Museum, Serpentine Galleries, and publications like Artforum, Frieze (magazine), ArtReview, The Art Newspaper, The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, Al Jazeera, BBC, The Washington Post and scholars such as Claire Bishop, Nicolas Bourriaud, Griselda Pollock, T. J. Demos, Rana Dasgupta, Raja Shehadeh. Critical debates address commodification, curatorial ethics, provenance research, restitution of objects like the Benin Bronzes and contested acquisitions involving the Louvre, British Museum, Hermitage Museum and private collections, as well as market mechanisms that involve galleries like White Cube, Gagosian Gallery, Hauser & Wirth, David Zwirner and support from patrons like the Guggenheim Foundation and foundations such as the Ford Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Category:Art movements