Book Review. Artists Remake the World, a Contemporary Art Manifesto – Vid Simoniti, New Haven and London, Yale Press University, 2023.

Faced with numerous political challenges of capitalist democracies, such as climate change and global inequality, the contribution of art may seem negligible.However, over time, artists have increasingly incorporated social and political themes into their works.This prompts a crucial question: what meaningful contribution can contemporary art offer to politics?Vid Simoniti, in his book Artists Remake the World: A Contemporary Art Manifesto, sets out to answer this question.Through an interdisciplinary approach that combines different philosophical and art-historical traditions, the author explores the relevance of contemporary visual art in modern democratic-capitalist societies.His intention is to demonstrate how artistic experience possesses a unique potential to emancipate audiences from conventional patterns of thought, prompting them to conceive possibilities beyond the political status quo.The volume is structured into seven chapters, each of which is introduced and enriched by a series of examples from works of art created over the last two decades.Among the many artists carefully discussed by Simoniti are Ai Weiwei, Wangechi Mutu, Olafur Eliasson and Naomi Rincón Gallardo.By positioning itself as a manifesto, Simoniti's work aims not only to describe but also defend the presented artworks, elevating them to models for the evolution of art and its political engagement.This programmatic aspect sets it apart from a conventional book, signaling a commitment to shaping the discourse and direction of contemporary art.The first chapter outlines the origins of political engagement in contemporary art.Simoniti traces this engagement back to the 1960s, a period that witnessed the emergence of the avant-garde and the simultaneous abandonment of traditional media in visual arts.According to the author, the flexibility gained through this abandonment is the distinctive feature of contemporary art exhibited in museums and galleries, determining its political potential.Building upon this premise, the subsequent three chapters explore various forms of political expression in which contemporary artists actively participate.