Art and its Worlds offers a possible history of art since 1989 told through the moments when art becomes public. The anthology addresses some of the myriad worlds conjured by art and the telling of their histories. It is guided by three questions: What is the 'global' for art and exhibition-making, or why has it been what it has? How have agents including artists and curators experimented with different forms of exhibition? And how do these exhibitionary moments connect to longer-term and institutional trajectories? Key texts previously published in Afterall journal appear alongside newly commissioned essays, artist contributions, conversations and translations, exploring exhibition as a material, embodied and political practice, while inviting a new location for past art and bringing it into the present for what is to come.

Introduction: exhibition histories through the shared art of memory -- I Introduction: Making art global? -- How to eat a forest / Ntone Edjabe -- In our language the word for the sea means the 'spirit that returns' / Adjoa Armah -- How do we know what Latin American Conceptualism looks like? / Miguel A. López -- NIRIN WURRUNMARRA / Brook Andrew and Anthony Gardner -- Anger and reconciliation: a very brief history of exhibiting contemporary Indigenous art in Canada / Lee-Ann Martin -- Art and the foreigner's gaze: a report on contemporary Arab representations / Pablo Lafuente -- On the curatorial in India: Geeta Kapur in conversation with Natasha Ginwala -- Aftermaths?: dOCUMENTA (13) in Kabul / Fracesca Recchia -- In real life: a reflection on the 'online exhibition' / Adeena May and David Morris -- 'Cities on the Move' in public space: a journey through the archive -- Potosí Principle: following the devil's tail / Luiza Proenc̦a -- Amo la montaña/I love the mountain / silvia Rivera Cusicanqui -- II Artist/Curator/Other? -- Introduction: artist/curator/other? -- David Hammons, Untitled (Knobkerry), 1994 / Elena Filipovic -- Brothers in arms: Laboratoire AGIT'art and Tenq in Dakar in the 1990s / Clémentine Deliss -- Center for Historical Reenactments: is the tale chasing its own tail? / Khwezi Gule -- Counter-imaginaries: 'Women Artists on the Move', 'Second to None' and 'Like a Virgin...' / Serubiri Moses -- Womanifesto / Bo Choy -- Fragmented sites of action: three art events in China's hinterland, 1992-94 / Xie Congyang -- On the subject of Object-act-ivities: 1989 in Hong Kong / John Tain -- Who cares a lot? ruangrupa as curatorship / David Teh -- The joy of meta: on the Museum of American Art / Steven ten Thije -- The artist as director: 'Artist Organisations International' and its contradictions / Ekaterina Degot -- III Institutional histories? -- Who needs 'exhibition studies'? / Yaiza Hernández Velázquez -- The art of gentrification: the Lisbon version / Ana Teixeira Pinto -- 'Public' and 'Access': genealogies of theft, conmmunity, violence and pedagogies / Khairani Barokka -- Museo Comunitario del Valle de Xico: a community's trench of struggle / Genaro Amaro Altamirano in conversation with Ana Bilbao -- 'Struggle as culture': the Museum of Solidarity / María Berrios -- La creatividad es un instrumento de lucha y el cambio social un hecho creativo (Creativity is an instrument of struggle, and social change a creative act) / Mujeres Creando -- VIVA Excon: itinerant indeterminacy / Vō Hông Chʹoʹng-Dài -- What was Chobi Mla and what happens next? / Naeem Mohaiemen -- Iniva: everything crash / Eddie Chambers -- My post-catastrophic glossary / Zdenka Badovinac -- Gound provisions / Tonika Sealy Thompson and Stefano Harney