Framed Beyond History: the curatorial practices of the exhibition Crisis of History #3 as alternative approach to framing contemporary visual art from Iran and beyond

This thesis explores the exhibition-tryptic Crisis of History held at the gallery space Framer Framed in Amsterdam in 2014-2015. It investigates how its practices can be regarded as innovative in shaping discourses on contemporary art. The exhibition looks critically at how ‘non-Western’ art has been dealt with in exhibition practices as well as in academic discourses and aims to present alternative visions. I have used the notions minor curating by Cotter and histoire croisée by Werner and Zimmermann, as well as Keshmirshekan’s critical history of contemporary art of Iran to conceptualise the exhibition practices of Crisis of History’s curators Robert Kluijver and Elham Puriyamehr. I have particularly zoomed-in on part #3 of the triptych as the layering of perspectives is most clearly visible here. The exhibition practices include strategies of self-representation, intellectual artistic positioning and open-endedness due to the equal importance of exhibition display and public...Show moreThis thesis explores the exhibition-tryptic Crisis of History held at the gallery space Framer Framed in Amsterdam in 2014-2015. It investigates how its practices can be regarded as innovative in shaping discourses on contemporary art. The exhibition looks critically at how ‘non-Western’ art has been dealt with in exhibition practices as well as in academic discourses and aims to present alternative visions. I have used the notions minor curating by Cotter and histoire croisée by Werner and Zimmermann, as well as Keshmirshekan’s critical history of contemporary art of Iran to conceptualise the exhibition practices of Crisis of History’s curators Robert Kluijver and Elham Puriyamehr. I have particularly zoomed-in on part #3 of the triptych as the layering of perspectives is most clearly visible here. The exhibition practices include strategies of self-representation, intellectual artistic positioning and open-endedness due to the equal importance of exhibition display and public programming. The use of the artworks, the offering of multiple and layered voices deployed in the exhibition practice shows how the interaction between theory, curatorial visions and artistic imagining of alternative pasts and futures brings the field of contemporary art forward in articulating visions towards the development of an inclusive art history.Show less

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Framed Beyond History: the curatorial practices of the exhibition Crisis of History #3 as alternative approach to framing contemporary visual art from Iran and beyond