Art-worlding the contemporaneity of a region: A case study on China’s Pearl River Delta

This article examines how art museums participate in shaping a contested regional identity by analysing four contemporary visual art exhibitions staged in the Pearl River Delta between 2017 and 2024, each narrating ‘tales of the south’ within the context of China’s Greater Bay Area initiative. Drawing on Heidegger’s notion of worlding and Bal’s concept of exhibition-ism, and informed by fieldwork, interviews, and document analysis, it explores how these exhibitions collectively articulate the Pearl River Delta’s identity in multiple – and at times contradictory – ways: as peripheral and ‘wild’ within China’s art ecosystem; as a frontier of modernization driven by urbanization, marketization, and globalization; as part of the Global South in solidarity with developing nations; and as an emerging international hub of innovation and technology. In doing so, this study theorizes exhibitions as worlding practices in contemporary art.