Nothing to declare? Weltkarten der Kunst seit ʼ89

Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, *1977 in Yaoundé (Kamerun), ist unabhängiger Kurator und Biotechnologe. Er ist Gründer und Leiter von SAVVY Contemporary Berlin und kuratierte dort bereits mehr als 60 Künstler aus fünf Kontinenten.

What is Global art?
“Well, I don’t really know what global art is or should be. Although I really understand the necessity to frame art under such a notion as “global art”, I still consider the term “global art” a tautology. Art is in itself global, as art or the reflections in art cannot be restricted within geographical constructs.
And I say this although I founded an art space that reflects on the concepts of “Western art” and “Non-Western art”, as well as a journal of Contemporary African Art. This was for me a radical move that stemmed from a lack of a critical discourse, a lack of art spaces, and a lack of publication space with regards to works done by artists from the non-West. There was and still is just few or no room for critical essays, reviews, features or the like for or on artists of non-Western origin in the secular art media in Germany. It was a radical move, as I mentioned, in this part of the world, where the idea of the Western art canon is still the norm and measure of all things. So, that is why from the very onset, the SAVVY Journal was seen as a temporal initiative, i.e. after doing a journal for Africa, Latin America, Asia, Europe and America, it will metamorphose to just one journal, which will evidently encompass art from the whole world, but without necessarily calling it global. And at the end of the day, the art space SAVVY Contemporary will just be an art space for critical reflections. The point I am trying to make is… art does not need the term “global” to justify its globalness/ globality/ internationality etc.”
Bonaventure, April 2013 

Gespräch in englischer Sprache