Building on the Karachi Biennale 2027 edition, scheduled for January 16-31, the course Learning from Biennales: Global Perspectives, Local Contexts will examine how contemporary art exhibitions and fairs have evolved to resist and challenge the Eurocentric model. Starting with the history of the biennale itself, the course uses a case-study methodology to understand how artists and curatorial approaches to narrative and exhibition-making critically respond to the geopolitical, social, and cultural crises of our moment. In other words, the course aims to understand how biennales respond to polycrisis by foregrounding the local.
The course will begin by tracing the history of biennales, from world fairs to museums, to understand how Eurocentric models of display and interpretation shaped a canonical lens. It will then analyse specific case studies from the Global South to examine how post-/de-coloniality, resistance, and third world solidarities have been enacted through various biennales, in an attempt to translate the global for the local.
The course will rely on site visits to the Karachi Biennale, meeting with artists and curators, and looking at case studies from Africa, SWANA region, Latin America and Pakistan to analyse how the model of the biennale is one from which we can look at narratives that seek to disrupt normative discourses, though how successful they have been is a point that will be consistently discussed in the classroom.
