18/19 18. Contemporary Art and Global Visual Culture Free Online FlashCards

What is contemporary art?

Contemporary art generally refers to art made from the late twentieth century to the present. It is a broad field shaped by globalization, decolonization, technology, identity politics, and ecological crisis.

What is installation art?

An installation is an artwork arranged in a particular space so viewers experience relationships among objects, architecture, light, sound, movement, and scale.

What does site-specific mean?

A site-specific work depends on a particular location for its meaning or physical form and may be altered or lost when removed.

How does video art differ from conventional cinema?

Video art uses moving images, sound, duration, editing, projection, monitors, or digital screens as artistic materials. It often emphasizes spatial installation, repetition, fragmentation, and physical viewing.

Why does digital art challenge older ideas of originality?

Digital art may exist as code, an interface, user interaction, a data stream, or an experience, challenging fixed ideas of originality and permanence.

What is relational practice?

Relational practice uses social interaction, participation, or collective activity as a primary artistic material. The work may be a shared meal, conversation, workshop, or community project.

How does contemporary art often approach identity?

Contemporary artists often treat identity as constructed, relational, and historically produced rather than as a fixed essence.

What does environmental justice emphasize?

Environmental justice asks who is most affected by toxic waste, extraction, climate change, flooding, drought, and other ecological harms.

What does decolonization involve in museums?

Decolonization involves questioning and redistributing the systems through which museums collect, classify, interpret, display, and control cultural materials.

What is provenance?

Provenance is the documented history of an object’s ownership, custody, movement, and collection.

How do restitution and repatriation differ?

Restitution generally means returning cultural property to a country, institution, family, or community with a claim to it; repatriation often emphasizes return to a country or Indigenous community of origin.

What two dimensions should global art analysis examine?

Globalization creates cross-border exchanges of ideas, materials, technologies, artists, and audiences, but it also exposes unequal systems of funding, visibility, translation, and preservation.