Avantgarde & Liberation. Contemporary Art and Decolonial Modernism

In the complex tangle of past and present, the catalogue reflects on questions of temporality as well as the possibility of engaging with old and new liberation movements. The catalogue raises questions of the political circumstances that move contemporary artists to resort to those non-European avant-gardes that formed as a counterpart of the dominant Western modernism from the 1920s to the 1970s. What are the potentials artists see in the ties to decolonial avant-gardes in Africa, Asia, and the “Black Atlantic” region, to take a stand against current forms of racism, fundamentalism, or neocolonialism. Text: Nana Adusei-Poku, Zeigam Azizov Saloni Mathur, Matthias Michalka, Lina Ramadan.