‘WESTERNESE CURATESE’

Hassan Vawda
Nov 2, 2020

WESTERNESE: a “system of significance” that constructs ‘the West’ as the future for ‘the Rest’ (Salman Sayyid and Barnor Hesse, 2002)

CURATESE: a clique driven culture of ‘Goldsmithian’ art school jargon and self-importance (coined by artist and writer, Hamja Ahsan)

There is a self aggrandising exclusionary soulless aspirational culture in the ‘art world’, the ‘art school’ and moulds performances out of ‘artists’. Its a culture based on ‘specialness’, of individual extravagance to conceptualize your own brain out of existence and work in a lexicon that has no relevance to anyone outside of the clubhouse. Its a culture based on constantly finding a fit for ‘otherness’ into the discursive Western cannon of experiences. It is the language of ‘Westernese Curatese’.

This chameleon cultural language spoken by many whose aspirations are set between shaking a tin pot to wealthy *regardless of ethics* benefactors who like art with their arms deals or kkkorupt inheritance packages of their mothers/fathers plantation estate and standing with chest out as a secular clergy to re/colonise or find some post-*insert any concept* meaning to any experience of life to fold into the favouritism phrase ‘modernity’ (or the so trendy ‘multiple modernities’).

If ‘Westernese Curatese’ is the language of aspiration in contemporary art, I think heaven should fall. *

*This too is written in ‘Westernese Curatese’

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Hassan Vawda

Researcher in art, community, religion and museums