A trans­mod­ern world has emerged, recon­fig­ur­ing the past 500 years of colo­ni­al­ity and its after­math, mod­ern­ity, post­mod­ern­ity and alter­mod­ern­ity. A remark­able fea­ture of this trans­form­a­tion is the cre­ativ­ity in/​from the Non-​Western world and its polit­ical con­sequences — inde­pend­ent thoughts and deco­lo­nial freedoms in all spheres of life. Deco­lo­ni­al­ity of know­ledge and being, two con­cepts that have been intro­duced by the work­ing group modernity-​coloniality since 1998 are encoun­ter­ing the deco­lo­ni­al­ity of aes­thet­ics in order to join dif­fer­ent gene­a­lo­gies of re-​existence in artistic prac­tices all over the world.

Transna­tional iden­tit­ies–in–polit­ics have inspired a plan­et­ary revolu­tion in know­ledge and sens­ib­il­ity. The cre­ativ­ity of visual and aural artists, thinkers, cur­at­ors and arti­fices of the writ­ten word have affirmed the exist­ence of mul­tiple and transna­tional iden­tit­ies, reaf­firm­ing them­selves in their con­front­a­tion with global imper­ial tend­en­cies to homo­gen­ize and to erase dif­fer­ences. The affirm­a­tion of iden­tit­ies is tan­tamount with the homo­gen­iz­ing tend­en­cies of glob­al­iz­a­tion which are cel­eb­rated by alter­mod­ern­ity as the ‘uni­ver­sal­ity’ of artistic prac­tices. This notion chas­tises the mag­ni­fi­cent diversity of human cre­at­ive poten­tial and its dif­fer­ent tra­di­tions; it per­en­ni­ally aims at appro­pri­at­ing dif­fer­ences instead of cel­eb­rat­ing them.

Massive migra­tion from the former East­ern Europe and the global south to former-​Western Europe (today European Union) and to the United States have trans­formed the sub­jects of colo­ni­al­ity into act­ive agents of deco­lo­nial delink­ing. “We are here because you were there” is the reversal of the rhet­oric of mod­ern­ity; transna­tional iden­tit­ies–in–polit­ics are a con­sequence of this reversal, it chal­lenges the self-​proclaimed imper­ial right to name and cre­ate (con­struc­ted and arti­fi­cial) iden­tit­ies by means either of silen­cing or trivialization.

The embod­ied daily life exper­i­ence in deco­lo­nial pro­cesses within the mat­rix of mod­ern­ity defeats the solitude and the search for order that per­meates the fears of post­mod­ern and alter­mod­ern indus­trial soci­et­ies. Deco­lo­ni­al­ity and deco­lo­nial aes­thet­ics are instru­mental in con­front­ing a world over­flowed with com­mod­it­ies and ‘inform­a­tion’ that invade the liv­ing space of ‘con­sumers’ and con­fine their cre­at­ive and ima­gin­at­ive potential.

Within dif­fer­ent gene­a­lo­gies of re-​existence ‘artists’ have been ques­tion­ing the role and the name that have been assigned to them. They are aware of the con­fine­ment that Euro-​centered con­cepts of arts and aes­thet­ics have imposed on them. They have engaged in transna­tional iden­tit­ies–in–polit­ics, revamp­ing iden­tit­ies that have been dis­cred­ited in mod­ern sys­tems of clas­si­fic­a­tion and their inven­tion of racial, sexual, national, lin­guistic, reli­gious and eco­nomic hier­arch­ies. They have removed the veil from the hid­den his­tor­ies of colo­ni­al­ism and have rear­tic­u­lated these nar­rat­ives in some spaces of mod­ern­ity such as the white cube and its affil­i­ated branches. They are dwell­ing in the bor­ders, sens­ing in the bor­ders, doing in the bor­ders, they have been the pro­pellers of deco­lo­nial trans­mod­ern think­ing and aes­thet­ics. Deco­lo­nial trans­mod­ern­it­ies and aes­thet­ics have been delink­ing from all talks and beliefs of uni­ver­sal­ism, new or old, and in doing so have been pro­mot­ing a pluriver­sal­ism that rejects all claims to a truth without quo­ta­tion marks. In this regard, deco­lo­nial trans­mod­ern­ity has endorsed iden­tit­ies–in–polit­ics and chal­lenged iden­tity polit­ics and the self-​proclaimed uni­ver­sal­ity of altermodernity.

Cre­at­ive prac­ti­tion­ers, act­iv­ist and thinkers con­tinue to nour­ish the global flow of deco­lo­ni­al­ity towards a trans­mod­ern and pluriver­sal world. They con­front and tra­verse the divide of the colo­nial and imper­ial dif­fer­ence inven­ted and con­trolled by mod­ern­ity, dis­mant­ling it, and work­ing towards “liv­ing in har­mony and in plen­it­ude” in a vari­ety of lan­guages and deco­lo­nial his­tor­ies. The worlds emer­ging with deco­lo­nial and trans­mod­ern polit­ical soci­et­ies have art and aes­thet­ics as a fun­da­mental source.

These artists are oper­at­ing in what can be seen as the con­cep­tual legacies of the Bandung Con­fer­ence (1955). The Bandung Con­fer­ence united 29 Asian and African coun­tries, and was fol­lowed by the form­a­tion of the Non-​Aligned Move­ment, in 1961, which included former East­ern Europe and Latin Amer­ica. The leg­acy of the Bandung Con­fer­ence was the pos­sib­il­ity of ima­gin­ing other worlds bey­ond cap­it­al­ism and/​or com­mun­ism, to engage in the search and build­ing of a third way, neither cap­it­al­ist nor com­mun­ist, but deco­lo­nial. Today this con­cep­tual leg­acy has been taken bey­ond the sphere of the state to under­stand cre­at­ive forms of re-​existence and autonomy in the bor­ders of the modern/​colonial world. The deco­lo­nial meta­phor a