Unpacking Europe

by Willem Boshoff

How European is Europe? In Rotterdam, the 2001 Cultural Capital of Europe, curator Salah Hassan posed this question to 18 international artists. Yinka Shonibare, Jimmie Durham, Willem Boshoff, Heri Dono, Coco Fusco, Ni Haifeng, Ken Lum, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons and Keith Piper are just a few of the artists whose non-European perspective has been brought to bear on the contradictions between the official story of Europe and its everyday reality, where heterogeneity, hybridity and cultural influences mutually determine the norm.

468 pages, Paperback

First published March 15, 2002

Reviews

[Myriam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't say I read this from cover to cover; it is a great reference text for anyone working in the area of the postcolonial with special interest in reversing the gaze to Europe. The essay section is very good, covering ground by a wide variety of contemporary and notable critics (Jameson, Zizek, Buck-Morss), who are contestatory rather than upholders of European might. The visual section is interesting but sometimes does not connect with the essays. The design of the text is genius -- one literally has to unpack the text to get into one section or the other, living up to the name of the collection.