Globalization

About

Globalisation is the thickening web of trade, migration, media and money that links distant places, and the uneven power it carries. Since the 1990s many artists have traced its routes and costs. Alighiero Boetti anticipated the theme in his Mappa series (1971–94), world maps with each country filled by its flag, embroidered by women in Afghanistan and later in Afghan refugee communities in Pakistan.

Allan Sekula's Fish Story (1989–95) followed container ships and dockworkers through the world's ports, and Mona Hatoum's Hot Spot outlines the continents in glowing red neon on a steel globe. Judi Werthein's Brinco (2005) put a compass, a map and painkillers into trainers handed out to migrants in Tijuana, while the same shoes were sold as design objects in San Diego. Weng Fen photographs schoolgirls perched on walls before new Chinese skylines, and the Gulf collective GCC parodies the ceremonial language of international summits.