106. What Can Minor Materialities Do to the Histories of Contemporary Art?

Over the past six decades, contemporary art has witnessed the growing visibility of materials, objects and practices long positioned at the margins of dominant artistic and cultural value. We use the term minor materialities to describe materials, objects and practices —including domestic objects, discarded matter, bodily traces and vernacular forms of making— historically excluded from dominant artistic and cultural hierarchies. Through the work of artists such as Faith Ringgold, Félix González-Torres, Mona Hatoum, Feliciano Centurión and Mari Katayama, these materialities have challenged the boundaries between art and everyday life while prompting museums and scholarship to reconsider artistic value and the writing of art history.

Building on feminist, postcolonial and decolonial art histories, material culture studies, critical museum studies and contemporary historiography, the panel adopts an intersectional perspective to ask not only how minor materialities have entered contemporary art since the 1960s, but also what they do to contemporary art history. Rather than treating them as neglected media awaiting inclusion, the panel asks how minor materialities become historiographical agents capable of reshaping artistic value, museum narratives and the writing of contemporary art history.

We welcome papers from any geographical context, particularly those that challenge Euro-American narratives of contemporary art. We are especially interested in contributions examining the use or institutional recuperation of everyday, vernacular or abject materials and exploring how objects become sites where intersecting histories of gender, race, disability, sexuality, labour, migration and colonialism are materially sedimented and historically negotiated. Accepted papers will conclude with a provocation and roundtable discussion on how minor materialities might shape future histories of contemporary art.

Themes: Contemporary art, Material culture, Historiography.

Additional format comment: The session will comprise three 20-minute papers, each followed by five minutes for discussion. The convenors will then offer a short theoretical provocation, using the papers as a point of departure to open broader questions about the historiographical potential of minor materialities. The session will conclude with a moderated roundtable discussion among the presenters and convenors on how minor materialities might reshape future histories of contemporary art.

Lead Convenor: Clara Zarza, IE University, Spain

Co-convenors: Yuji Kawasima, IE University, Spain.

To submit a Paper to this Session, please follow the guidance on our website and complete the AAH 2027 Call for Papers Proposal Submission Form.