Global Positioning Systems

Global Positioning Systems comprises selections from the permanent collection of Pérez Art Museum Miami displayed alongside a number of significant works on loan. Presented in PAMM’s Overview Galleries, it is a single exhibition divided into six interrelated parts—History Painting, Mediated Memory, The Subjective City, Uses of History, The Contested Present, and Forms of Commemoration—two on the museum’s first floor and four on the second floor. It features the work of more than 35 artists grouped according to shared themes and conceptual approaches. 

The 21st century finds us in a moment of unprecedented global interconnectedness: the effects of political turmoil, flows of capital, and the rise of digital communication and the Internet have engendered increased transnational dependencies and the movement of people, money, and ideas across geographies. In many ways, this has undermined fixed notions of center and periphery and signaled the heightened importance of disparate regions in constructing a global context. The field of visual art has likewise become broader and more internationally encompassing, and the production of contemporary art and art history reflects a myriad of voices and perspectives.

One of the most important cultural effects of globalization has been the destabilization of any singular understanding of time or world history. In contrast to the value previously placed on grand narratives during modernism and the Cold-War period, in recent decades we have come to place importance on individual subjectivities in constructing our worldview. Through the artworks presented in Global Positioning Systems, we can consider the way in which individual cultural and geographic experiences—our positioning—compels us to explore, reinscribe, and communicate ideas around history, the past, and our shared understanding of the contemporary world.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website