Decolonial Aesthetics

Decolonial Aesthetics / Aesthesis has become a connector across the continents 

Walter Mignolo

Essay: Re:emerging, Decentring and Delinking. Shifting the Geographies of Sensing, Believing and Knowing
A review of Sharjah Biennial 11 curated by Yuko Hasegawa ( Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo)

The epistemic and cultural privilege of European modernity is over, as is the politico-economic privilege. The shift to the eastern hemisphere and the 'Global South' is founded in both economic growth and cultural confidence. Hasegawa noticed that the artists of the 'Global South' and 'Far East' are using the same techniques originating in the west, but privileging identity when using them. A parallel with the global economic order is in place: the planetary economic order is capitalist, but the BRICs countries are acting on politico-economic state identities and delinking from the IMF and the World Bank.[12] Dignity is at stake at every level here, for the simple reason that identity is what Eurocentrism taught the rest of the world to despise so as to become modern (postmodern or altermodern), developed and 'civilized.
---
But what is not fine is to expect the universalization of western localities and sensibilities, simply because you cannot universalize the local without erasing the localities of others. That was and is the problem with the Eurocentred idea of modernity. Once, people around the world believed that 'the way' was to embrace western modernity. Now, the trick has been uncovered and the departures have already begun. They are wide and far spread.

Essay Delinking

Decolonizing solidarity resources and ideas organised by Clare Land