In a powerful research project initiated by Astrup Fearnley Museet, Imagine Brazil showcased Brazilian contemporary art through a compelling curatorial approach. Exhibition curators Gunnar B. Kvaran, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Thierry Raspail invited a group of emergent Brazilian artists to produce new work, and in addition select an older artist who they considered influential, to accompany them in the exhibition.

Documenta (13) directed by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, was only the second to be led by a woman. It was notable for many others reasons, including an assembly of recruited “agents” from all over the world for her team of advisors led by Chus Martínez from Spain; an explanation that the theme was a “non-concept,” with a long, rambling poetic title (The dance was frenetic, animated, clattering, twisted, and lasted a long time), and a parallel exhibition in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Afro Modern: Journeys through the Black Atlantic took place at the Tate Liverpool in 2010 and was ultimately inspired by Paul Gilroy’s seminal book The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (1993). As the organisers described it, the exhibition identified a hybrid culture that spans the Atlantic, connecting Africa, North and South America, The Caribbean and Europe.

Documenta11 in 2002 was led by the first non-European art director – Nigerian-born Okwui Enwezor – who created what is remembered as a foundational global and postcolonial edition of this seminal event in Kassel, Germany. This iteration of documenta rested on five platforms that aimed to “describe the present location of culture and its interfaces with other complex, global knowledge systems,” Enwezor explained, with documeta 11 being the 5th and final in this series of platforms.

The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945–1994, was a landmark exhibition exploring the confluence of African culture and independence through art, film, photography, graphics, architecture, music, literature, and theatre. Featuring works by more than 50 artists from 22 countries, the exhibition was notably extensive, occupying the entire three floors of MoMA P.S.1 in New York City.

Cities on the Move was a seminal traveling exhibition curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Hou Hanru. The exhibition toured to multiple locations from 1997 to 1999, exploring the cultural influence of East Asia’s meteoric urban development in the late twentieth century through the lens of visual art, architecture, and film.

The 2nd and final Johannesburg Biennale took place in 1997 under the artistic direction of Okwui Enwezor, who at the time had been appointed as the curator at the Art Institute of Chicago. The biennale differed in structure to its 1995 predecessor. It was composed of a series of exhibitions with 6 international curators.

The Bienal de la Habana, when first established in 1984 offered a singular and crucial meeting place for art from the region, exhibiting artists solely from Latin America and the Caribbean. In the second edition in 1986, the Bienal included art from Africa, Asia and the Middle East, becoming one of the most important platforms for artists from outside the West.