AccScience Publishing / AC / Volume 2 / Issue 1 / DOI: 10.36922/ac.1608
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PERSPECTIVE ARTICLE

Contemporary art from the Global South in the art auction market from 2020 to 2022

Victoria Mouraux Durand-Ruel1 John Zarobell1*
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1 Department of International Studies, University of San Francisco, California, United States of America
Submitted: 16 August 2023 | Accepted: 26 September 2023 | Published: 8 November 2023
© 2023 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution -Noncommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0) ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ )
Abstract

In recent years, emerging artists from the Global South have garnered substantial attention in the art market. This study seeks to examine the market value and ecosystem evolving around these emerging artists by analyzing the sales results of 51 artists between 2020 and 2022. This research aims to establish patterns linking unprecedented sales results with exhibition history and highlights the essential network required for these artists’ commercial success. The study reveals that the emergence of artists in the global art market results from a deliberate effort by a network of stakeholders. Our exhibition database led us to a group of 438 stakeholders who promote this sample of artists. By examining artists’ origins, backgrounds, and careers, this study provides context for analyzing the impact of artistic migration on artists’ visibility, the importance of being promoted by a variety of specialists, and the surge of African artists in the global art market since 2020. Our findings indicate that the structure of the art world has shifted toward a decentralized global art market characterized by a diverse range of actors and inputs dispersed globally. This diversification has disrupted traditional power structures in the art world, opening up new possibilities for emerging artists from the Global South, thereby contributing to a more equitable and inclusive art market.

Keywords
Art Market
Global South
Contemporary art
Globalization
Black Lives Matter
Funding
Faculty Development Fund of the University of San Francisco
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Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
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Arts & Communication, Electronic ISSN: 2972-4090 Published by AccScience Publishing