What to Let Go?

What gets counted within the category of heritage, and who gets to do the counting?

What to Let Go? offers new contributions by and international roster of thinkers, authors, anthropologists, curators, artists, and poets addressing the question: what gets counted within the category of heritage, and who gets to do the counting? Addressing the increasing debate around repatriation of looted artefacts by colonial powers to the varied and dissimilar processes of renaming and removing symbols of past eras, from India and Myanmar to Apartheid South Africa, the book will also look at how China’s resurgent nationalism is placing a (still developing) version of its imperial heritage at the core of its twenty-first century self-image. As these processes appear to occupy an increasingly prominent segment of the political discourse, with history seemingly becoming the major battlefield both for the left and for the right, What to Let Go? asks: how can art reconfigure our collective foundational myths?

Cosmin Costinaş is co-Artistic Director of the 24th Biennale of Sydney (2024) and co-curator of the Romanian Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale (2022). He was the Executive Director/Curator of Para Site, Hong Kong (2011–2022), Artistic Director of Kathmandu Triennale 2020 (2022), Curator of Dakar Biennale 2018—La Biennale de l’Art africain contemporain-DAK’ART, Dakar (2018), Guest Curator at the Dhaka Art Summit ’18 (2018); Co-curator of the 10th Shanghai Biennale (2014), Curator of BAK-basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht (2008–2011), and Co-curator of the 1st Ural Industrial Biennial, Ekaterinburg (2010).