Nicolas Bourriaud - Mass Culture to Social Practices in Europe & US

Lesson part of the course Decolonised History of Art: Global Narratives from 1900 to the Present. Click here for the programme and the full course.

This lesson focuses on the emergence of the social turn and the development of relational aesthetics in contemporary art at the turn of the twenty-first century. It explores how artists in Europe and the United States redefined artistic practice as a site of encounter, exchange, and collective experience, moving beyond object-based production toward forms of participation, socialization and collaboration. Central to this discussion are the works of Félix González-Torres, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Liam Gillick, and SUPERFLEX, among others, whose projects activated social relations as both medium and message. Alongside these relational practices, the lesson also addresses the rise of archival, research-based, and documentary approaches, seen in artists such as Christian Boltanski, Thomas Hirschhorn, and Forensic Architecture, and postmodern interventions in mass culture, such as those by Cindy Sherman, Jeff Koons, Jenny Holzer, and the Young British Artists. All these tendencies are considered in relation to profound global shifts like the expansion of neoliberal economies, the pervasive influence of digital and mass communication and production, and the redefinition of public and private spheres.

Nicolas Bourriaud is a curator, art critic, and theorist internationally recognized for shaping contemporary art discourse. He is best known for developing the concept of Relational Aesthetics in the 1990s, published in 1998, which has had a lasting impact on global artistic practice. A prolific writer and curator for major art institutions, he continues to influence debates on globalization, cultural hybridity, and the role of art in society.