Abstract

This thesis examines four instances between 2002 and 2012 where Canadian artists have participated in international exhibitions: in all these cases the Canadian identity of the artists in question is de-emphasized, while a new global identity comes into play: David Altmejd at the 2003 Istanbul Biennial; Ingrid Bachmann at the 2012 Havana Biennial; Brian Jungen at the 2009 Basel Art Fair, and Gareth Moore at the 2012 dOCUMENTA exhibition in Kassel. This study interrogates the shifting meaning of “global art” at the present time, by evaluating the circumstances of these institutions and tracking the curatorial outlook, the artworks presented and the location and context of each global encounter. The theoretical approaches of contemporary thinkers such as Arjun Appadurai, Ali Behdad, Okwui Enwezor, Nikos Papastergiadis and John Ralston Saul provide a framework for thinking about the way the global has been positioned. The case studies identify how the global can be considered as a paradigm that expands beyond the easy opposition of global vs. local, or global vs. national, by considering instead the complex set of issues that arise when artists participate in global exhibitions. The global paradigm opens up the discourse of contemporary art to a multitude of possibilities for exchange and interaction.