Birgit
Hopfener, "Global Art History and the Challenge of Plurality. From Global Conceptualism towards a Pluriversal Conceptual Framework
for Contemporary Art"
Mainstream discourse of contemporary art in the global
context, predominantly derived from Euro-American scholarship, has been largely unconcerned with rethinking Euro-American
conceptual frameworks, and not yet sufficiently attended to the plural and transculturally interconnected conceptual and social
histories that constitute contemporary art in the global framework. In 1999, the exhibition Global Conceptualism: Points of
Origin, 1950s-1980s that was on show in several venues in the US, took up the challenge of how to engage with the plurality
of contemporary conceptual art by adopting a multi-regional approach. Acknowledging and critically engaging with the exhibition’s
seminal contributions, I take analyses of contemporary Chinese historiographic art as case studies to make the argument that
it is only by further complicating and pluriversalizing the conceptual frameworks for contemporary art in the global context
that we do justice to art’s plurality and work towards “discursive equality” (Parul Dave Mukherji).
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