Contemporary art today encompasses a wide range of cultures, histories, and social experiences. Artists from Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa are active in international biennials, museums, galleries, and art markets. Histories and cultures that received insufficient attention within Western-centered accounts of art history have also become important subjects of contemporary art.
 
Yet whether these changes necessarily lead to greater diversity in art requires further consideration. Increasing the diversity of participating regions and artists is a different matter from diversifying artistic forms, languages, and criteria of evaluation.
 
The preceding installment, “Global Standards (I),” examined how shared forms, institutions, discourses, and systems of circulation have developed within global contemporary art. It identified the “globalization of form and localization of content” as a central feature of this process.
 
Here, global standards refer to conventions of exhibition, interpretation, and evaluation repeatedly shared across major institutions and networks in the international art world, rather than a single, formally codified set of rules. These conventions provide a basis for connecting art from different regions, while also influencing which works and discourses gain international visibility and legitimacy.
The increased visibility of different cultures and histories within the international art world is a significant achievement. Geographical diversity, however, does not necessarily guarantee aesthetic diversity. Even when art from different regions addresses distinct histories and experiences, the ways in which it is expressed, interpreted, and exhibited may follow common frameworks.
 
What requires our attention, then, is the possibility that diversity and standardization are advancing simultaneously. As the subjects addressed by art and the regions participating in its production expand, might internationally recognized forms and languages be converging in particular directions? This question offers a starting point for examining both the possibilities opened by global standards and their limitations.
 
 
 
How Did Diversity Become a Global Standard?
 
Since the second half of the twentieth century, diversity has become an important value in international contemporary art. Regions and cultures, along with questions of race, gender, class, and identity, that had been excluded or marginalized by Western-centered art histories became subjects of art historical research and exhibitions.
 
Postcolonialism, feminism, and multiculturalism influenced not only how art was understood, but also the direction of museum collecting and exhibitions, criticism, and education. Art historical narratives organized around Western modernism expanded to consider the different histories of modern and contemporary art across multiple regions.
 
Held at the Centre Pompidou and La Villette in Paris in 1989, 《Magiciens de la Terre》 brought Western and non-Western artists together in a single exhibition, making the contemporary presence of non-Western art visible within the international art world. Its attempt to apply common selection criteria to works from different regions also connects with the central question of this essay: is exhibiting art from different contexts together the same as diversifying the criteria by which it is judged?
 
The proliferation of international biennials from the 1990s onward likewise provided important avenues through which artists from different regions could participate in the international art world. Documenta 11, directed by Okwui Enwezor in 2002, is a major example of an international exhibition that expanded its geographical and discursive scope through a postcolonial perspective. Discussions of democracy, truth and reconciliation, creolization, and African cities took place across several continents and were connected to the exhibition. The exhibition in Kassel constituted the fifth and final platform.
 
The significance of these developments extends beyond the increased diversity of participating artists’ nationalities. They prompted a reconsideration of what should be understood as contemporary art, how its histories should be written, and what roles museums and curators should assume.
 
As diversity became a central value in the international art world, however, the ways in which it was recognized and accommodated also became established conventions of exhibition and evaluation. This calls for a closer examination of the tension between the expansion of diversity and its institutionalization.
 
 
 
The Institutionalization of Diversity and New Forms of Authority
 
Identity, migration, decolonial perspectives, ecology, community, and social practice are now familiar concerns in international biennials and museums. These concerns address important problems facing the world and have expanded the ways in which contemporary art engages with society.
 
Yet when particular concerns are repeatedly selected and become principal grounds for explaining a work’s significance, the discourses surrounding them can acquire new forms of institutional authority. What matters in this process is not only the legitimacy of these concerns, but also how different experiences are understood and evaluated.
 
Within international exhibitions and criticism, artists explain the histories and cultures of their own regions in language accessible to audiences and professionals elsewhere. Local experiences are translated into international discourses, and the meanings of works are interpreted in relation to those discourses.
 
Such translation is an important part of exchange. A shared language connects different experiences and opens up possibilities for understanding art that has previously received insufficient attention. The participation of artists from additional regions can also transform existing languages and interpretive frameworks.
 
The issue changes, however, when a shared language becomes more than a means of understanding a work and begins to determine what qualifies as diversity. Experiences that are readily explained through established discourses may receive attention, while sensibilities, modes of thought, and formal experiments that do not fit those frameworks may remain insufficiently understood.
 
The institutionalization of diversity must therefore be assessed both in terms of how many differences it accommodates and whether those differences can transform existing criteria of interpretation and evaluation. The institutions that accommodate diversity must themselves remain open to revision through new experiences and forms of expression.
 
 
 
Shared Forms and the Possibility of Aesthetic Homogenization
 
Another issue raised by global standards concerns artistic form and modes of expression. Biennials and international exhibitions across different regions feature installation, video, sound, performance, archive-based and research-driven work, and socially engaged projects.
 
These forms have expanded the scope of art once understood primarily through painting and sculpture, opening up new expressive possibilities. The growth of international art education, exhibitions, residencies, and curatorial networks has provided an important basis for exchanging working methods and knowledge.
 
At the same time, these connections may reinforce the repetition of particular working methods and exhibition languages. Different historical experiences can be presented through documents and records, video and text, installations and participatory projects, and explained through shared theories and social discourses.
 
The use of similar media and themes, however, does not in itself establish aesthetic homogenization. Just as different aesthetic approaches can emerge within painting, installation, video, and archive-based work can generate distinct sensibilities, temporalities, and spatial experiences. Shared forms can also provide a basis for producing new differences.
 
In this essay, form therefore encompasses more than the type of medium used. It includes how materials are selected and arranged, how relationships between works and audiences are established, and how experience is organized through concepts and artistic form. The question of standardization concerns whether these modes of construction and criteria of interpretation become dependent on particular conventions in ways that narrow other possibilities.
 
When internationally shared modes of expression are transformed through encounters with new experiences, the globalization of form can expand aesthetic diversity. Conversely, when artists increasingly repeat established ways of constructing and explaining their work, distinct forms of content may be presented within similar frameworks.
 
This is the paradox of the globalization of form., A common language that has expanded expressive possibilities can also constrain them if it becomes a convention through which only particular approaches are recognized as internationally intelligible art.
 
 
 
Global Standards and the Power Structures of Art
 
These possibilities cannot be explained solely through the choices of individual artists. International contemporary art operates within a complex system in which biennials and museums, universities and research institutions, galleries and art fairs, publishing and media influence one another.
 
Participation in international exhibitions, museum acquisitions, criticism and research, gallery exhibitions, and market circulation all contribute to the formation of a work’s value. Cultural and symbolic value, alongside economic value, emerge through interactions among these institutions and markets. They sometimes reinforce one another and sometimes come into conflict.
 
When particular works and discourses are repeatedly selected and studied, the criteria used to understand and evaluate them accumulate through education, publishing, exhibitions, and circulation. These established criteria can, in turn, influence subsequent selections and judgments of value.
 
These fields do not all operate according to the same criteria. Biennial programming, museum collecting, academic research, and market demand have different purposes and conditions, while competing perspectives exist within each field. Global standards develop and change through these differences and conflicts.
 
Nevertheless, the distribution of international visibility, resources, and the authority to interpret and evaluate remains an important issue. The participation of institutions and professionals from multiple regions does not, in itself, establish that such authority has been sufficiently dispersed.
 
The diversification of art’s geographical centers must be considered separately from the emergence of new criteria of evaluation. What matters is whether newly participating regions can move beyond entering existing systems to influence how those systems’ criteria are formed and revised.
 
 
 
What Should Korean Contemporary Art Be Alert To?
 
Korean contemporary art also operates within these international structures. Overseas exhibitions and international exchanges involving Korean artists, together with the activities of international galleries and art fairs in Korea, have broadened the channels connecting Korean art to the global art world.
 
These connections are important because they expand opportunities for artistic creation and circulation, research and criticism. Yet participation in international exhibitions and success in the market alone are insufficient grounds for determining whether Korean art has become an active producer of new aesthetic approaches and artistic value.
 
If Korean history and social experience are presented only as examples that support existing international discourses, Korean art may remain confined to reproducing established frameworks and criteria. Even when Korean materials or traditional imagery are used, it is necessary to examine how they transform the thinking and construction of the work.
 
The central question is less whether an international artistic language is used than what is newly created through it. Korean history, culture, and social realities should be able to move beyond serving as content placed within predetermined forms and become catalysts for changing form and the criteria of interpretation themselves.
 
Korean contemporary art has accumulated experience in adopting and transforming international forms and discourses. Building on this experience, it is now necessary to examine concretely how different creative and research practices generate new possibilities for expression and thought.
 
This requires the development of criticism and research that interpret and evaluate works; curating and museums that identify emerging artistic value; and archives and publishing that document and preserve these achievements, alongside artists’ creative practices.
 
International recognition is an important dimension of evaluation. It needs to be accompanied by the capacity to discover, discuss, and build a sustained understanding of artistic value within Korean art itself. Such capacity enables Korean art to move beyond responding to external selection and to participate actively in the formation of value internationally.
 
 
 
Beyond Diversity: Toward New Artistic Production
 
Global standards have broadened the geographical scope of contemporary art and created a basis for different cultures to communicate within an international arena. Building on this achievement requires attention not only to expanded participation, but also to how diversity develops in artistic thought and expression, interpretation and evaluation.
 
The participation of art from different regions in an international arena is not the same as the production of diverse aesthetic approaches and values. The task ahead is to use shared languages and institutions while creating conditions in which new experiences and forms of expression can transform existing artistic forms and criteria of judgment.
 
It is here that the question of the post-contemporary reemerges. In this series, the post-contemporary is used as a perspective for reconsidering the structures and criteria that have made contemporary art possible, and for exploring the conditions under which their limitations might be overcome.
 
From this perspective, the crucial questions concern who judges artistic value, which experiences and forms of expression receive adequate interpretation, and where new artistic languages and criteria emerge. The future of Korean contemporary art is connected to these questions.
 
For Korean art, becoming an active contributor to shaping global art means moving beyond creating and circulating works internationally to participating in the formation of new aesthetic approaches, formal languages, discourses, and criteria of evaluation. When the capacity to create new artistic value develops alongside the capacity to interpret, evaluate, and build on it, Korean art can meaningfully expand the diversity of global art.
 

The next installment, “Global Standards (III)—Beyond Global Standards: What Will Korea Produce?”, will examine the conditions and possibilities through which Korean contemporary art can become an active producer of new aesthetic approaches and artistic value.

Jay Jongho Kim graduated from the Department of Art Theory at Hongik University and earned his master's degree in Art Planning from the same university. From 1996 to 2006, he worked as a curator at Gallery Seomi, planning director at CAIS Gallery, head of the curatorial research team at Art Center Nabi, director at Gallery Hyundai, and curator at Gana New York.

From 2008 to 2017, he served as the executive director of Doosan Gallery Seoul & New York and Doosan Residency New York, introducing Korean contemporary artists to the local scene in New York. After returning to Korea in 2017, he worked as an art consultant, conducting art education, collection consulting, and various art projects.

In 2021, he founded A Project Company and is currently running the platforms K-ARTNOW.COM and K-ARTIST.COM, which aim to promote Korean contemporary art on the global stage.