Grant H. Kester Livres

Provides an overview of the broader continuum of collaborative and collective art practices

Some of the most innovative art over the years has been created far outside conventional galleries and museums. This title discusses a disparate network of artists and collectives united by a desire to create new forms of understanding through creative dialogue that crosses boundaries of race, religion, and culture.

The book features a well-structured table of contents that outlines its key topics and themes, providing readers with a clear roadmap of the material covered. Each section is designed to guide readers through the content systematically, making it easier to navigate and understand the main ideas presented throughout the text. This organizational approach enhances the overall reading experience by allowing for quick reference and efficient study.

Grant H. Kester examines the evolving discourse of aesthetic autonomy from its origins in the Enlightenment through avant-garde projects and movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

In Beyond the Sovereign Self Grant H. Kester continues the critique of aesthetic autonomy begun in The Sovereign Self, showing how socially engaged art provides an alternative aesthetic with greater possibilities for critical practice. Instead of grounding art in its distance from the social, Kester shows how socially engaged art, developed in conjunction with forms of social or political resistance, encourages the creative capacity required for collective political transformation. Among others, Kester analyzes the work of conceptual artist Adrian Piper, experimental practices associated with the escrache tradition in Argentina, and indigenous Canadian artists such as Nadia Myer and Michèle Taïna Audette, showing how socially engaged art catalyzes forms of resistance that operate beyond the institutional art world. From the Americas and Europe to Iran and South Africa, Kester presents a historical genealogy of recent engaged art practices rooted in a deep history of cultural production, beginning with nineteenth-century political struggles and continuing into contemporary anticolonial resistance and other social movements.