Paper short abstract:

To empirically study and theorize the deterritorialization and decentralization of the contemporary global art world, the recent changes have to be tackled from a local perspective. The contemporary Indian art world has become translocal and thus apt to investigate the impacts of globalization, liberalization and medialisation, and vice versa.

Paper long abstract:

The current global art world witnesses a shift from the "old" Euro-American art centres to the "new" art centres in the MENASA region and in East Asia that have emerged since the 1990s and led to an era of contemporary art that transgresses not only territories and forms new central hubs but moreover seems to initiate a paradigm shift toward a "post-hegemonial, post-ethnic and post-Western" (Belting) notion of global art.

In order to empirically study and theorize the deterritorialization and decentralization of the contemporary global art world, I argue that recent changes of the global art world have to be tackled from a local perspective. As a network of local and global links among participants of art production, distribution, perception and consumption, I consider the booming contemporary Indian art world in a state of translocality (Freitag, von Oppen) and hence an apt research field to investigate the impacts of globalization, liberalization and medialization on the contemporary Indian art scene, and vice versa.

In observing the recent developments of the current art world in India, I firstly state a structural change towards a differentiated, translocal art world, thereby reflecting a new part of Indian society. Based on the assumption that the media is (a) an important player of the Indian art world and (b) a meaning maker within the framework of reputation building processes for contemporary art, I secondly regard the Indian art world as currently being in a state of its emerging medialisation.