Contemp Art Vocab

• Tate Modern/Turbine Hall

  • Largely dramatic and tall space in the Tate modern for large-scale site-specific works
  • Olafur Eliasson, El Anatsui, Doris Salcedo have exhibited works here
• Spectacle

  Contrived experience, seen most in installations
• Charles Saatchi

  • Produced the exhibition "Sensation" with the YBA artworks he owned, indicative of the rise of financial class, 1999
• Young British Artists (YBA's)

  • Group of young British artists who dominated the contemporary art field for a while
  • Major participant was Damien Hirst
• Primary Market

  Where an artwork is sold first whether it be directly, through a dealer, or commissioned work
• Auction Houses

  Place where art auctions take place, participate in bid receiving from in person bidders or phone bidders, prices of artworks made known to public unless part of private auction
• Art Fairs

  Trade show vibes, conventional spaces (like for conventions) that host tons of works all at once and individual artists or galleries will have a representative present to sell the works
• Art Basel Miami Beach

  • Art fair, industrial warehouse, corporatizing art, mainly paintings because that's what sells the best and the most
• Whitney Bienniale

  • Exhibition with specific theme taking place every two years at the Whitney Museum in NYC
• Venice Biennale

  • International cultural exhibition taking place every two years in Venice, large national pavilions and smaller pavilions around the city
• Shanghai Biennale

  • First international biennale of contemporary art in mainland China
  • Fuck off Pavillion hosted Ai Weiwei and his shattering of urn, commentary on Chinese government conforming to western art styles and exhibitions
• Arnold Bode

  • Creator of Documenta in 1955, used art to rebuild country divide, Eurocentric
• Okwui Enwezor/Documenta 11

  • Nigerian curator, Documenta 11 first truly global Documenta, post-colonial perspective, discursive public interventions around present day issues
• Documenta 15 (2022)

  • Indonesian artist collective (ruangrupa) curated, invited other artist groups upwards of 15,000 artists participated, embodies the lumbung narrative of Indonesia with collectivity, shared resources and buildings, equitable distribution
  • Antisemitic imagery by Taring Padi sparked outrage, it was the biggest work in the show and was said to have featured antisemitic caricatures with a yarmulke obscured by black tape
  • Hito Steyerl withdrew from the exhibit
  • Tokyo reels, a series of Palestinian propaganda films were also on display
  • Ruangrupa fired back in an open letter to their accusors, signed by artists such as Tania Brugruera
  • Many artists feared backlash of antisemitism after being included in the exhibit
• Surveillance capitalism

  Widespread collection and commodification of personal data by companies, artists like Jill Magid, Hito Steyerl, and Trevor Paglan, work to show thus reality and arm their viewers with tactics for questioning these institutions and surveillance as a whole