Recentering the Artist

This chapter builds on the artist-centred themes introduced in Chapter 11 , focussed on studio and site-specific practices by numerous artists. These include perspectives and discourses on identity; the continued contestation of colonial narratives and aesthetic regimes; and a worldwide resurgence of figural painting and sculpture evident in recent decades, continued by a new generation of artists, many asserting contemporary perspectives on cultural resilience and visibility. These developments also manifest in new approaches to monumental art, not necessarily of a memorial nature and the chapter concludes with an account of recent projects by a number of artists across several territories worldwide.