GLOBAL CONTEMPORARY
1980 CE - PRESENT

Theories & Interpretations

• Art becomes self-aware and often critiques art itself, rejecting modernist ideals in favor of irony, fragmentation, appropriateion, and eclecticism

• Artists respond to migration, diaspora, cultural hybridity

• New Media & Digital Technology encompasses a rise in video art, digital installations, digital art

• Art is used as a means to discuss sensitive topics like identity, race, and gender

• Artists respond to war, environmental crisis, often serving as protest, resistence, or documentation

• Rise in social practice art and art that interacts with the public

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Style Characteristics

• No dominant "look" or aesthetic

• Artists freely mix styles and break traditional boundaries

• Ues of multiple materials and techniques - mixed media (digital, video, sculpture, textiles, found objects, sound, installation)

• Use of indigenous and non-Western symbols/styles alongside global pop culture

• The idea or message is often more important than how the work looks

• Viewers often interact with the work or become part of it

Architecture & Structures

Deconstructivist Architecture: (Guggenheim Museum Bilbao by Frank Gehry and MAXXI National Museum by Zaha Hadid)

•  fragmented forms and distorted geometry

• Surfaces appear torn, exploded, or shifting,

• Asymmetry, sense of movement