Conditions of Transcultural Curating: Ecology, Decoloniality, and Global Exhibition Practices

Dear Colleagues,

The transcultural circulation of art, long celebrated as a marker of global connectivity, unfolds against complex ecological and geopolitical conditions. This Special Issue, “Conditions of Transcultural Curating: Ecology, Decoloniality, and Global Exhibition Practices” examines how curatorial practice mediates artistic circulation across cultures while attending to ecological entanglements and decolonial critique. It seeks contributions that explore exhibitions, collections, live programmes, and curatorial experiments that engage with questions of environmental justice, extractivism, migration, or more-than-human relations, reframing global artistic circulation through locally situated, ecological, and cultural perspectives.

This Special Issue understands curatorial practice as a critical site where transcultural encounters are actively produced, negotiated, and contested. We welcome contributions that analyse curatorial strategies in institutions, biennials, artist-run and community contexts, and digital or hybrid exhibition formats that centre ecological and postcolonial concerns. Case studies might consider how exhibitions acknowledge material infrastructures of circulation, how curatorial methods respond to environmental crisis and displacement, or how more-than-human and Indigenous perspectives actively shape how art circulates, is interpreted, and is exhibited internationally, with implications for curatorial frameworks, ethics, methodologies, and modes of relation.

This issue builds on the existing literature in global art and exhibition histories and curatorial studies that explore the movement of art and ideas across borders (e.g., Belting & Buddensieg; Papastergiadis; Smith; Filipovic et al.). It also connects with research in environmental humanities, eco-aesthetics and decolonial aesthetics that address the ecological and political dimensions of cultural practices (e.g., Enwezor; Demos; Gómez-Barris; Neimanis; Bailey-Charteris; Mignolo & Vázquez). By foregrounding ecological and decolonial perspectives within transcultural curating, this Special Issue will supplement scholarship on global artistic mobility by emphasising the material, institutional, and ethical conditions of curatorial practice.

We invite original research articles, theoretical essays, and practice-based reflections that engage with these themes. Contributions may be historical, contemporary, interdisciplinary, or methodological, and should address issues of curatorial significance within the articulated scope.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 200–400 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the Guest Editor (marianna.tsionki@leeds-art.ac.uk) or to the Arts Editorial Office (arts@mdpi.com). Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editor for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer-review.

References

Bailey-Charteris, Bronwyn. The Hydrocene: Eco-Aesthetics in the Age of Water. London: Routledge, 2024.

Belting, Hans, and Andrea Buddensieg, eds. The Global Art World: Audiences, Markets, and Museums. Berlin: Hatje Cantz, 2009.

Demos, T. J. Decolonizing Nature: Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology. Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2016.

Enwezor, Okwui. “Mega-Exhibitions and the Antinomies of a Transnational Global Form” in Terry Smith (ed) Selected Writings, Volume 1: Toward a New African Art Discourse. Durham: Duke University Press, 2025, 269-298.

Enwezor, Okwui. “The Postcolonial Constellation: Contemporary Art in a State of Permanent Transition” Research in African Literatures, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Winter, 2003), pp. 57-82.

Filipovic, Elena, Marieke van Hal, Solveig Øvstebø (eds). The Biennial Reader. Berlin: Hatje Cantz, 2010

Gómez-Barris, Macarena. The Extractive Zone: Social Ecologies and Decolonial Perspectives. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017.

Mignolo, Walter D., and Rolando Vázquez. “Decolonial AestheSis: Colonial Wounds/Decolonial Healings.” Social Text Online 2013. Dossier

Mignolo, Walter D. The Politics of Decolonial Investigations. Durham: Duke University Press, 2021

Neimanis, Astrida. Bodies of Water: Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology. London: Bloomsbury, 2017.

Papastergiadis, Nikos. The Cosmos in Cosmopolitanism. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2023.

Papastergiadis, Nikos. Cosmopolitanism and Culture. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012.

Smith, Terry. Contemporary Art: World Currents. London: Laurence King, 2011.

Dr. Marianna Tsionki
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the Special Issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Arts is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.