De-Globalizing the Art World

This book examines documenta fifteen (2022) as a turning point in global art politics, from ruangrupa's Indonesian lumbung model to Palestinian cultural infrastructures. It traces how debates over collectivity, decolonisation, and memory politics reveal the contradictions of globalisation, financialisation, and contemporary art's search for rootedness.

De-globalizing the Art World charts the shifting terrain of contemporary art, from the ambitious internationalism of the 1990s to the fractured, contested landscapes of the 2020s. At its centre is documenta fifteen, curated by the Indonesian collective ruangrupa, whose lumbung model sought to reimagine artistic infrastructure around resource-sharing and collectivity. While celebrated globally, the exhibition also became the site of fierce controversy in Germany, revealing how postcolonial critique collided with national memory politics and entrenched debates on antisemitism.

The book situates documenta fifteen within a longer history of biennials, mega-exhibitions, and collective practices, while tracing the insufficiencies of these models for grappling with cultural infrastructures in politically fractured contexts. This book highlights how cultural infrastructures from Jakarta to Ramallah navigated NGOisation, donor regimes, and financialised economies. By pairing close analysis of Indonesian and Palestinian art worlds with German debates (especially those of the Antideutsche), this book reveals documenta fifteen as a crucible for broader questions about globalisation, memory politics, and the contradictions of collective art-making today.

Drawing on curatorial theory, political economy, and cultural infrastructures, this book shows how the art world has shifted from expansive visions of transnational solidarity to a more fraught politics of rootedness, identity, and site-specific belonging. De-globalizing the Art World provides a critical lens for understanding contemporary art's role in broader debates on globalisation, decolonisation, and the limits of collectivism in a de-globalising world.