This World Is White No Longer
Views of a Decentered World

“This world is white no longer, and it will never be white again,” the American writer James Baldwin declared in his essay Stranger in the Village in 1953. Baldwin’s prophetic dictum represents both a forceful critique of white Western thinking and an impassioned call for a universal humanism. The attitude on which the exhibition was based saw Baldwin's challenging statement, that the white gaze has lost its power-political dominance and validity, as a central element in thinking about racist patterns of thought and behavior. The exhibition made an effort to take off the “white glasses” and explored the shift of perspective as a productive factor for perceiving and shaping the world.

One point of reference for the exhibition was the multimedia installation Black Box / White Box by artist and philosopher Adrian Piper, which is held in the Generali Foundation Collection. Piper offers two different views—a black and a white—on a case of structural racism that has gone down in history. The installation makes it possible to become immersed in two different perspectives, to engage in a shift of perspective from each standpoint and to gain insight on the path of empathy.

The exhibition presented works and projects by artists who have dealt with historical and current manifestations of racism and who stand for an opening of thought towards a multiperspectival globality.

Artists: Karo Akpokiere, Lothar Baumgarten, Danica Dakić, Forensic Architecture, Samuel Fosso, Charlotte Haslund-Christensen, Alfredo Jaar, Voluspa Jarpa, Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński, Adrian Piper, Lisl Ponger, Kara Walker

In the Generali Foundation Study Center, a project exhibition of the Class for Photography and New Media, Mozarteum University Salzburg, was presented as an expanded discussion of the topic.