Article relating to an exhibition, 2002
Published by: Art Monthly
Year published: 2002
Unpaginated.

A4 laserjet copy/taken from “Athens” research website/originally published in Art Monthly, no. 259 (September 2002) p.17/Letter to the editor - in relation to Documenta 11/2 pages

Title: In the heart of the black box
Author: Rasheed Araeen

In a letter to the editor, the writer criticizes the content of The Black Box, curator Okwui Enwezor’s introductory essay in the catalogue for the Documenta 11 exhibition. From the article: “Enwezor claims to be contesting the language of Modernism and the Avant Garde, which he thinks represents a continuation of Western hegemony. What then is the actual language of the artworks he is presenting as an alternative which, in his view, goes “beyond Westernism” and “shatters the narrow focus of Western global optics”? can mere subject matter - here he invokes the struggle of the oppressed - confront and change the language in which it is inserted adequately and still produce something significantly new and different in terms of art? If the language remains the same as that in what is denounced as part of “the scheme of Empire”, how is Enwezor carrying out his ambition of “displacing its historical context” in Kassel? “