Sixteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

The Times Art Center Berlin, Germany, presents itself as the first overseas branch of an Asian art museum, the Guangdong Times Museum, China. It thereby proposes to inverse the power structures of colonial museum geographies of Western institutions linearly branching out into the world. In this paper, I investigate the relationship of this decolonial museum discourse aiming at a global audience with the efforts of art institutions in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) in Southern China to articulate local identities. In which way do the museums alter institutional geographies, how is decolonial discourse put into practice, and which are the resistances and limits to this practice? Approaching these questions first requires to analyze the Times Art Center Berlin and the Guangdong Times Museum in their economic contexts. Both are owned by Times China Holdings Limited, a major real estate developer in the PRD, including the metropolitan centers Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Macao and Hong Kong SAR. Second, the entanglement of economic and political interests between museum and real estate leads to investigate the cultural-political activities in the PRD in recent decades. While artists from this region have received increased attention in the global art world, it has also become a site of cultural mega-projects like the West Kowloon Cultural District in Hong Kong, which was met with resistance by parts of Hong Kong’s population. I thus investigate the entanglements of global and local negotiations of power, cultural productions, and institutionalization between Southern China and Central Europe.