FRIAS Kolloquium - Birgit Hopfener

Doing critical global art history. Transcultural analyses and a pluriversal conceptual framework for contemporary art historiographic art

What is at stake when art history is practiced in a critical global framework? How has the discipline responded to the world’s complexity, the challenge of epistemological and human plurality, including difficult histories and hierarchies?

Building on recent discourses my book project Doing critical global art history. Transcultural analyses and a pluriversal conceptual framework for contemporary art historiographic art takes art historiographic artworks as a starting point to reflect and expand our presumptions of how contemporary art is shaped and reshaped through multiple and transculturally entangled histories and epistemologies. Seeking to contribute to a pluriversal conceptual framework and a globally connected history of art historiographic art, I argue for the necessity to expand our cultural historical repositories of how art’s relation to history and historiography has been conceptualized. In this regard, I will discuss how insights into a longer history of art historiographical art in China add new layers of meaning to our understanding of contemporary art historiographical art by Li Ran and Qiu Zhijie and, furthermore contribute to a critical global discourse on art historiographical art.