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ongoing). The series comprises archival photographsdocumenting the first independence dayceremonies of various Asian and Africannations, including Indonesia, India, Ghana,Senegal, Tunisia, Philippines, Syria, Sudan,Malaysia, and Algeria. 23 It presents a chilling,Identikit formula behind the political autonomy(and consequently “modernity”) introduced tothe post-colonial regions. It is a political formulathat continues to affect the identities of theseregions today. Jafri’s images show how a politicalsystem introduced by a colonial power isadopted thereafter by a post-colonial society:when the oppressed speak the language of theoppressor. The same observations have beenmade by the insertion of the contemporary artmarket and its exhibitionary complexes in thepost-colonial regions.In thinking about the legacy of the World’sFair, it is this historical underscoring that makesart fairs and biennials such problematic spaces.They are inherently tied to a certain global systemdriven by a kind of imperialist, free marketideology proposed in the 1851 Great Exhibitionand which has since evolved. And the biennial isalso implicated. Charlotte Bydler notes howLondon’s Great Exhibition of 1851 was a preliminary“to the internationalist dimensions of themodern biennial … a showcase for the advancesof British Industrialist production,” 24 whileLee views biennials as representative of a country’scultural point of entry into this globaleconomy. In this estimation, it is impossible notto look on art fairs and biennials as zones ofsocial, political, and cultural relations mediatedby the shared, global language of hypercapitalism.For Lee, this exchange is “signaled by the[government-sponsored] public relations juggernautsthat precede the official openings; bythe phenomena of art fairs that seem to trailthem; and by the clusters of transnational exhibitionsopening within days of each other, as ifto appeal to the itineraries of the travellingclass.” 25It’s true: these global spaces cater to a specifichierarchy. But they are also spaces in which hierarchy,albeit temporarily, is broken down. Associal scientist and geographer Doreen Masseyargues in her book For Space, the expansion ofthe art world allows for a reading of global languagesand histories from a wider perspective⎯arespatialization of modernity and itslegacies. Through this lens, the proliferation ofthe biennial and art fair formats is driving aprocess of reculturalization and repoliticization.At the same time, they are providing platformsin which local and global relations are negotiatedand ultimately formed, becoming whatcritic Lawrence Alloway might have termednegotiated environments 26 or what Lee mightdescribe as intersecting worlds 27 that facilitate a“shifting, transnational order.” 28But as much as art fairs and biennials arereplicable infrastructural elements or apparatusespertaining to a transnational order, theyare also microcosms that shed light on howglobalization is being translated in real time andin specific local contexts. Today, the same apparatusesthat have been used historically touphold Western imperialism and its philosophiesare being inverted so that they mightspeak of and for the “outside”⎯the so-called“global periphery”⎯ from the inside. The proliferationof art fairs and biennials is enacting adecentralization: a cultural—and by implicationhistorical and political—remapping of the worldand its centers of power using the very structureswithin which power is embedded. 29 Froma global perspective, this indicates how these“fairennial” formats, though unquestionablyimplicated in the machinations of global capitalism,are also potential sites for real alterationand subversion. Ultimately, it is how thesemodels are perceived, used, and changed thatproduces a shift.Stephanie Bailey is a writer, artist, and educatorwho divides her time between the UK, where sheis pursuing an MA in Contemporary Art Theory atGoldsmiths College in London, and Greece, whereshe teaches in the Foundation Diploma in Artand Design at Doukas Education in Athens. Herwritings have appeared in ART PAPERS, Aesthetica,Artforum.com, Frieze, Naked Punch, LEAP andYishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art.ABOVE: Maryam Jafri, Syria-India-Congo 1946–1960, from the photo installation Independence Day 1936–1967, 2009–present / OPPOSITE: Maryam Jafri, installation view ofIndependence Day 1936–1967, 2009-present, approx. 24 x 7 feet, at Communitas: The Unrepresentable Community, Camera Austria 2011 (images courtesy of the artist)36 ART PAPERS