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Arts & Communication

PERSPECTIVE ARTICLE
Contemporary art from the Global South in the

art auction market from 2020 to 2022

Victoria Mouraux Durand-Ruel and John Zarobell*
Department of International Studies, University of San Francisco, California, United States of
America

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
*Corresponding author: structures in the art world, opening up new possibilities for emerging artists from the
John Zarobell Global South, thereby contributing to a more equitable and inclusive art market.
(jzarobell@usfca.edu)
Citation: Durand-Ruel VM, Keywords: Art Market; Global South; Contemporary art, Globalization; Black Lives Matter
Zarobell J. Contemporary art from
the Global South in the art auction
market from 2020 to 2022. Arts &
Communication. 2024;2(1):1608.
https://doi.org/10.36922/ac.1608 1. Introduction
Received: August 16, 2023
One of the most remarkable transformations in the world of contemporary visual art
Accepted: September 26, 2023 over the last generation has been the inclusion of artists from the Global South in art
Published Online: November 8, 2023 exhibitions, biennials, art fairs, and auctions held in traditional art capitals in Europe and
North America. While there are more changes than can be described in a single paper,
Copyright: © 2023 Author(s).
This is an Open Access article and many of the larger issues have been addressed in a growing body of literature on art
distributed under the terms of the and globalization, the market mechanism responsible for introducing such artists to the
Creative Commons Attribution Western world has not received sufficient examination. The geography of the art world is
License, permitting distribution,
and reproduction in any medium, rapidly changing, with the number of circuits within the global art market continuing to
provided the original work is expand. Yet the global success of artists from countries previously considered marginal
properly cited. is an important manifestation of globalization in the art world. This paper aims to focus
Publisher’s Note: AccScience on how these artists enter the global market and gain recognition within that system,
Publishing remains neutral with enabling them to become fixtures in an art world previously dominated by artists from
regard to jurisdictional claims in
published maps and institutional just a handful of countries. So long as there has been an art market, it has been expanding
affiliations. and transforming, but there is a case to be made that the changes of the past generation

Volume 2 Issue 1 (2024) 1 https://doi.org/10.36922/ac.1608