A Critical Reading of Postcolonialism in Contemporary Art

With the growing dominance of Western colonial systems in knowledge, culture, and the arts, alongside the expansion of elite grand narratives, and the continued political colonization through economic and cultural hegemony (media, globalization, and stereotypical representation), the emergence of modern critical philosophies (Derrida, Lyotard, Foucault, Deleuze) aimed at deconstructing centrism and advocating for pluralism and difference. This has highlighted the need for postcolonial studies, which took on the task of restoring the marginalized voices of colonized peoples and deconstructing the colonial discourse and the stereotypes formed about the colonized populations. Additionally, these studies have worked toward recovering identities and revitalizing suppressed cultures by understanding the impact of colonialism and its symbolic tools deeply embedded in the present (education, art, language, and religion), granting societies the tools to understand themselves in accordance with liberating knowledge from Western European centrality.

This prompted the researcher to raise the following question: How has postcolonial critical reading been represented in contemporary formation? Thus, the first chapter provided the methodological framework of the research, presenting the research problem and its importance, aiming to offer a critical (exposing) reading of the stereotypes drawn by the colonizer about the colonized peoples. The aim of the research focused on revealing the visual equations and conceptual foundations of postcolonialism in contemporary formation. The research was confined to the period (2018–2023) and geographically limited to the artistic outputs of postcolonialism in contemporary formation, including America, Africa, Britain, and Nigeria. The chapter also addressed the identification and clarification of key terms and their meanings.

The second chapter consisted of two sections: the first addressed the conceptual institutions of postcolonialism, while the second covered the artistic applications of postcolonialism in the field of visual arts.