Unpacking Europe

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Review: Unpacking Europe is an exciting collection of scholarly essays and artists' projects which interrogate the historical and contemporary meanings of Europe. Examining the construction of "Europeanness," this volume focuses on the contradictions between homogenizing official narratives and everyday realities of urban life, where heterogeneity and hybridity have long been the living norms. The theme is timely, given the political climate in Europe, its shifting demographics, and the rising xenophobia and hardening of immigration policies.

Published in conjunction with the major exhibition Unpacking Europe, initiated by Rotterdam 2001-Cultural Capital of Europe, at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, the volume includes a preface by Gilane Tawadros, and is composed of two parts:

Part One includes substantial essays by important scholars from around the globe rethinking various philosophical, historical, and cultural facets of Europe. The writers include Leslie Adelson, Martin Bernal, Rustom Bharucha, Susan Buck-Morss, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Rey Chow, Jimmie Durham, Fatima Eltayeb, Okwui Enwezor, Fredric Jameson, Ali Mazrui, Natalie Melas, Apinan Poshyananda, Irit Rogoff, Naoki Sakai, Ted Swedenburg, and Slavoj Zizek.

Part Two focuses on the artists' projects. It includes commissioned essays on each of the artists by well-known art critics as well as reproductions of the artists' works. The participating artists are Willem Boshoff, Magdalena Campos-Pons, Heri Dono, Coco Fusco, Ni Haifeng, Fiona Hall, Susan Hefuna, Isaac Julien, Rachid Koraichi, Ken Lum, Nalini Malani, Yvette Mattern, Johannes Phokela, Keith Piper, Anri Sala, Yinka Shonibare, Vivan Sundaram, Nasrin Tabatabai, Beate Terfloth, Carmela Uranga, Fred Wilson, and Shi Yong.

Unpacking Europe serves as an insightful reader for an academic audience. It is also essential reading for anyone who is interested in Europe's historical and contemporary role in the global context, especially in philosophical, social, and cultural contexts.

Salah Hassan is Chair of the Department of the History of Art at Cornell University. He is an art critic, curator, and editor of Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art. He recently curated Authentic/Ex-centric, the African pavilion for the 49th Venice Biennale (2001).

Iftikhar Dadi is a doctoral candidate in the History of Art at Cornell University, and an artist who has exhibited widely.