The New International

Published for the exhibition “The New International” which held in Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, 1 August-21 September 2014. Navigating the prevailing discourses after 1989, including the end of the Cold War, the social impact of late capitalism, and an escalating fear of terrorism, the exhibition draws on two generations of artists — those who rose to international attention and those who came of age during the decade. The artists experiences span divergent geographies, and their practices resist national or mono-cultural categories. Instead, they juxtapose plural temporalities and perceptions in order to engage audiences visually, physically, and psychologically in nuanced worldviews. Exploring how new approaches in art challenged dominant perspectives on issues such as identity politics, the U.S. War on Culture, and the former East-West divide, each artist presented in The New International has developed a singular approach to making work that lays the foundation for a new understanding of what the concept of “international” can mean. Recognizing the term as one that is frequently used as interchangeable with “foreign”, as well as one that now implies understanding the self in relation to a bigger viewpoint as opposed to a unilateral nationalism, the new internationalism slows down the onset of a fully-globalized world. In other words, it is a way to describe how individuals share, understand, or experience context-specific situations without universalizing the outcomes.