Daniël van der Giessen ~ The Good Object: Political Traction in Contemporary Art

Thesis Supervisor: Bethany Crawford

Thesis: The Good Object: Political Traction in Contemporary Art

May 2026

Abstract

This thesis investigates why political engagement from the professional field of contemporary art struggles to effectively influence a broader audience. Here, the sector’s operational logic is problematized as being a set of imperatives that regulate access to participation through assessments of legitimacy. The dissertation is situated in a historical moment where the longue durée of neoliberal forms of governance and economy befall the world as crises of inequality, social injustices, climate degradation, war, and fascistoid authoritarianism. In direct relation, contemporary art’s political engagement is determined as attempts of artists and art institutions to represent critiques surrounding these crises. Informed by Willem Schinkel and Rogier van Reekum’s analysis of the dominant global neoliberal order, involving the management of compliant participation and subversion in sustained inequality, contemporary art is examined in how this sector copies neoliberal logic, behaviors, and conditions. To reveal how this field’s attempts at subversion are paralysed by these adopted logics and conventions, an understanding of the sector’s political engagement is substantiated by Tirdad Zolghadr’s reflections on political indeterminacy and the institutionalised use of language in contemporary art, and by Suhail Malik’s observations on art, virtue, and exceptionality. These sources are synthesized through uncovering exemplary occurrences in the professional field, like art funding, its exhibition contexts, and the art academy. Ultimately, this serves to demonstrate how participation in contemporary art is regulated through reified notions of legitimacy, restricting accessibility inwards, and subsequently how representations of political engagement are churned to comply with these notions, making them inaccessible outwards too.

Author: Daniël van der Giessen