Category: Curator
Nationality: French
Last Year: New
Not content with coining the term ‘relational aesthetics’ for a generation of art students, Nicolas Bourriaud spent last year coming up with a new buzz-concept, the ‘altermodern’, which he applied to curating and reinvigorating the latest edition of Tate Britain’s slightly fading triennial format. Breaking with convention, Bourriaud staged a yearlong programme of ‘prologues’ leading up to the exhibition itself, which was loved by visitors and loathed by Britain’s dim-witted newspaper art critics, proving that Bourriaud still has the knack for polarising opinion and provoking debate. Lately he’s been publishing The Radicant, his book-length essay on twenty-first-century modernity, in several European languages and advising on the Ile Seguin ‘island of culture’ being masterplanned by Jean Nouvel in Paris.