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Western Railway. The exhibition also signifiedAmerica’s position as “an industrial power to bereckoned with.” 15 The relationship betweenBritain and the United States grew closer⎯Brunel built steamships capable of crossing theAtlantic in nine days, and the Suez Canal openedup faster sea routes to India and the Far East. 16Sociological historian Tony Bennett describesthe 1851 Great Exhibition as the prototypical“exhibitionary complex, an arrangement of institutionalforms that are museological, but alsoencompass modes of public spectacle and sites ofcommodity arrangement and exchange.” 17 Theevent signaled an entire world system, assertedby an imperial power predicated on trade, affectingthe political and physical landscapes ofnations around the world. At the time, PrinceAlbert stated:We are living at a period of most wonderfultransition, which tends rapidly toaccomplish that great end, to which,indeed, all history points—the realizationof the unity of mankind .… The distanceswhich separated the different nations andparts of the globe are rapidly vanishingbefore the achievements of modern invention,and we can traverse them withincredible ease; … thought is communicatedwith the rapidity, and even by thepower, of lightning. 18Albert’s observations of the attempted “globalunity” of the World’s Fair foreshadow the contextin which art fairs and biennials replicate themselvestoday, amidst the rapid flows and rupturesproduced by globalization. Like Art Cologne andHarald Szeemann’s “Great Exhibition,” theWorld’s Fair became a popular format in thepower centers of the Western world, not only as away to smooth international trade relations butalso as a way to handle the political and socialconflicts of globalization (read: colonization) andthe assertion of “Globalization” abroad. 19 In this,these events became spaces both of soft power(the use of culture to assert political agendas)and mediatory politics. The 1851 Great Exhibition,for example, was organized after the Chartistmovement and the 1848 Communist Manifestohad both precipitated 1848’s failed EuropeanRevolution. Stateside, the St. Louis World’s Fair of1904 famously celebrated the centennialanniversary of the Louisiana Purchase and recentUS colonial exploits in the Philippines. Likewise,documenta was founded by Arnold Bode in 1955as what writer Bernhard Schulz called “a therapeuticagent to heal the emotional wounds of theSecond World War.” 20This complex historical DNA is what makes artfairs and biennials such rich and problematicspaces through which to both assess and asserthow “the global” is forming in the 21st century.The UAE is a good example, with Art Dubai evolvingalongside modernization that has been shapingthe country since it gained independencefrom British colonizers in 1971. The establishmentof Art Dubai in 2006 echoes the UAE’s growthsince its independence and subsequent move toglobalize. In the case of Dubai, the art fair alsoreflects how a society might become, through theideology of free trade and relatively liberal businessenvironments, a 21st-century “free zone”much like Hong Kong and Singapore. 21In this, the staging of these global art eventscannot be read without considering the equallyreplicable nature of a world city as “global hub,”or without regard for the social, economic, andpolitical systems that are likewise replicated inthese cities and their respective nations. Considerthe UAE, which comprises seven emirates—AbuDhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, ‘Ajman, Umm al-Quwain,Ras al-Khaimah, and Fujairah—each with itsown ruling family and local government. TheUAE’s government-sponsored website describesthe country’s political structure as “a uniqueamalgamation of …. traditional and modernpolitical systems.” 22 This political legacy revealsthe heritage of colonial rule and is further exemplifiedin the physical landscapes of Dubai andAbu Dhabi, replete with glass and steel skyscraperslike those found throughout the world. Thisreplicable global urbanism is reflective of howart fairs and biennials are likewise spacesinscribed with a particular global agenda rootedin the history of industrial imperialism and internationalism.The multiplication of these exhibition modelsthus recalls a Duchampian sensibility—one thatcorrelates with an industrial reproducibility.Consider here Maryam Jafri’s photographicinstallation Independence Day 1936–1967 (2009–OPPOSITE AND ABOVE: Maryam Jafri, Vietnam-Tanzania-Malaysia-Kenya 1954–1963, from the photo installation Independence Day 1936–1967, 2009–present (courtesy of the artist)ARTPAPERS.ORG 35