Description
Book SynopsisHistorically, artwork has played a powerful role in shaping settler colonial subjectivity and the political imagination of Westphalian sovereignty through the canonization of particular visual artworks, aesthetic theories, and art institutions’ methods of display.
Engaging directly with Indigenous contemporary artists, this book makes the case that decolonial aesthetics is a form of knowledge production that calls attention to the foundational violence of settler colonialism in the formation of the world order of sovereign states. Contemporary Indigenous artists’ projects that engage with the political violences of settler colonialism demonstrate how artwork can play a key role in decolonizing political imagination and academic knowledge production about territorial sovereignty and in Indigenous peoples’ reclamations of relationships with traditional lands and waterways.
This book contributes a transnational feminist intersectional analysis of artwork as a powerful force in world politics and argues that contemporary artwork is a site of knowledge production that provides vital insights for scholars of world politics. The objective is to contribute to IR debates on aesthetics, anarchy/hierarchy in world ordering, and structure/agency as well as to contribute to public conversations on the politics of reconciliation between Indigenous peoples and non-Indigenous settlers in global contexts.
Table of ContentsChapter 1. Introduction: Settler Colonial Claims to Sovereignty and Decolonial Contemporary Artwork
Chapter 2. Creative Presence: Tracing the Coloniality of Global Power and Decolonial World Politics Through the Materials, Media Forms and Place-Making of Contemporary Artwork
Chapter 3. Unsettling International Relations: Decolonizing International Relations Theories of Global Power and Settler Colonial Claims to Exclusive Sovereignty
Chapter 4. Decolonizing Settler Colonial Art Institutions: Brian Jungen’s Visual Exhibition Methods of Prototypes for New Understanding
Chapter 5. Materializing Indigenous Self-Determination: Brian Jungen’s Materials and Sculptural Methods in Prototypes for New Understanding
Chapter 6. The Scenario of Naming Power: Remembering Traumas of Canadian Settler Colonialism in Rebecca Belmore’s filmed performance installation The Named and the Unnamed
Chapter 7. International Art World and Transnational Artwork: Creative Presence in Rebecca Belmore’s Fountain at the Venice Biennale
Chapter 8. Conclusion: Contemporary Artwork and Decolonial Futures of World Politics
Works Cited
Index
