Avant-Garde and Liberation: Contemporary Art and Decolonial Modernism

“documents the show, but goes beyond the confines of that experience to deliver a richer, more complete picture of the curator’s thesis through deeply researched, informative essays and commentary.”

Created as the companion text to the exhibition of the same name at mumok (Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien) in Vienna, Avant-Garde and Liberation: Contemporary Art and Decolonial Modernism serves as one of the best museum publications of the year.

While the museum itself was forged in response to the social and political shifts of the long 1960s, as a Western institution it, by default, also often repeated the practices that created those historic injustices. Thus is the predicament of many museums: attempting to reconfigure the colonial model from within. How does one give artists their due without tokenizing or othering them in the process? The foreword by Karola Kraus and Matthias Michalka pulls no punches in driving this message home, noting the many false starts and hollow steps that were taken to include artists and narratives from Asia, Africa, and Latin America, as well as the post-Cold War Eastern Europe—that is, of course, until this exhibition.

Such a sharp turn seems a bit disingenuous. In no world does one exhibition right the wrongs of a complicated past nor make up for myriad injustices toward creators of just as many, if not more, varied backgrounds than were originally included in the canon. In stating as much, Kraus and Michalka put too much pressure on a single show, demanding that it be more than one exhibition could ever be. Course correction is a process, and Avant-Garde and Liberation is just one of many stops along the way.

The exhibition itself is far too small to be the world-altering juggernaut promised; however, each of the artists featured do indicate the many means by which people are “responding to contemporary forms of racism, exploitation, and oppression by making pointed reference to the history of decolonial liberation efforts.” It serves the viewer (and, by extension of this text, the reader) far better to view each piece or at least each artist as an individual using the past to make sense of the present.

While a bit light on visuals, the many essays in this volume are more laser-focused and informative than the exhibition’s wall text. Christian Kravagna’s opening piece in particular sets the stage for how Western institutions have conceptualized what art by Black, female artists can be, and provides a detailed history of how that work has been received in traditional spaces over the past 50 years. The subsequent sections in his text highlight decolonial efforts, providing the reader with a crash course on African and African American liberation through the arts. Correctly, he does not shy away from noting that this entire concept is historically Eurocentric, and that a recalibration is necessary to push the debate further into the 21st century.

Also included is a deeply intellectual conversation between Kravagna and Nana Adusei-Poku, a scholar and author currently teaching at Yale University. What unfolds between them is one of the most informative and enriching dialogues included in comparable exhibition catalogues.

Importantly, space is also given to the history of art and colonialism in India—a topic many museums are currently exploring, the most recent and notable of which is The Imaginary Institution of India, currently on view at the Barbican in London. Saloni Mathur’s essay on the topic speaks more specifically to individual works on view in the mumok exhibition rather than the topic at large; however, it is a fine introduction to a topic often ignored in Western institutions.

Overall, Avant-Garde and Liberation does what a good exhibition catalogue should do: it documents the show, but goes beyond the confines of that experience to deliver a richer, more complete picture of the curator’s thesis through deeply researched, informative essays and commentary.