Utopias (Whitechapel: Documents of Contemporary Art)

Utopian strategies in contemporary art seen in the context of the histories of utopian thinking and avant-garde art.
Throughout its diverse manifestations, the utopian entails two related but contradictory elements: the aspiration to a better world, and the acknowledgment that its form may only ever live in our imaginations. Furthermore, we are as haunted by the failures of utopian enterprise as we are inspired by the desire to repair the failed and build the new. Contemporary art reflects this general ambivalence.