Tarika Johar is an art historian and a PhD fellow in the Research Training Group “Aesthetics of Democracy” at Goethe University Frankfurt. Working at the intersection of art history, art theory, aesthetics, and political philosophy, she explores the sensory dimensions of democratic coexistence as articulated in the aesthetics of contemporary art. Additional research interests include media theory, digital visual cultures, ecological discourses, and transnational studies.

In addition to her academic work, she draws on her experience as a research assistant at the university as well as her curatorial and publishing activities in the field of contemporary art. She worked with the International Performance Art Archive (now part of the documenta archiv, Kassel) and organized the performance series “Exbodiment” in Cologne and Giessen. For her master’s thesis she received the Benvenuto Cellini Prize.

Cohesion, Adhesion, and the Politics of Relation

My dissertation project examines bonds in contemporary art. It investigates how politics of relation become legible in art history as an aesthetics of democratic coexistence.

To examine the sensory dimensions of contemporary democracies, I employ the conceptual pair of cohesion and adhesion as an analytical framework: cohesion refers to the binding forces within a whole, such as a material, a society, or a state. Adhesion, by contrast, describes material, affective, and physical relations operating at boundaries and in interstices. Together, the concepts provide an aesthetic vocabulary for describing politics of relation across multiple scales (micro, meso, macro) and modes of reference (interior, exterior), while enabling the assessment of the intensity of bonds.

Two case studies from the visual arts form the starting point of the investigation: the exhibition “Basic Needs,” shown at the Expo 2000 world’s fair in Hanover and curated by the Indian scenographer Rajeev Sethi, and the intervention “It’s All Rheydt” (2011) by the German artist Gregor Schneider during the Durga Puja Festival in Kolkata, listed as an intangible UNESCO World Heritage site. Both events unfolded within the history and contact zones of German-Indian relations during years in which partnerships between the two democracies were being strengthened.

Publications

“ASMR”. Glossar der Gegenwartsästhetik, edited by Moritz Baßler, Heinz Drügh, Nathan Taylor, Konstanz University Press, forthcoming.

“Pole Bending”. Pole Bending. Romina Abate and Anna Holzhauer, Basis Frankfurt e.V., 2024, pp. 7–13.

“EXBODIMENT. Performance series with the International Performance Art Archive”. Kunsthalle Gießen, 2022.

“1981/2021. Einführung”. 1 Monat Experimentelles Arbeiten, edited by Boris Nieslony and Michael Stockhausen, International Performance Art Archive, 2021, pp. 8–12.

“Kasia Fudakowski, Continuouslessness Travel Edition”. Klosterfelde Edition, 2021.

“Ursula Schulz-Dornburg”. Bild Macht Religion – Kunst zwischen Verehrung, Verbot und Vernichtung, edited by Hans Günter Golinski, Kunstmuseum Bochum, 2019, pp. 68–70.

“Sarah Księska. The role of figuration in times where people increasingly abstract themselves from their own physicality”. KubaParis, 2019.

“Black Audio Film Collective & John Akomfrah: Expeditions – Signs of Empire”. Studiengalerie 1.357, 2019.
“Gentle Heterodoxy. Social Body and Its Enchantments”. Passe-Avant, 2019.

“Cemile Sahin. Für immer ist immer schrecklich”. KubaParis, 2018.

Curatorial Projects

“EXBODIMENT. Performance series with the International Performance Art Archive ‘Black Kit’ ”, 2022, Kunsthalle Gießen.

“One Month of Experimental Work 1981/2021”, performance festival, Cologne, 2021 (curated with Boris Nieslony, Evamaria Schaller).

“tracing echoes. Sonia Knop, José Montealegre, Esteban Sánchez”, fffriedrich, Frankfurt am Main, 2019 (curated with Seda Pesen, Sarah Müller).

University Teaching

“From Mass Media to Social Media: Visual Culture and Media Reflection in Contemporary Art,” Institute of Art History, Goethe University Frankfurt, 2025.

“The Planetary in Contemporary Art,” Institute of Art History, Goethe University Frankfurt, 2025/2026.