Identity and Art

"Two factors determine the nationality of art: (a) the place where the art is produced and (b) the national background of the artist."
- John Graham, taken from Cultural Pluralism Versus the American Canon by Lowery Stokes Sims

Although this statement was made over 50 years ago, we still seem to be discussing its relevance today. In an earlier class we talked about the pressure to explore identity if you are an artist associated with any community which has experienced historical oppression. Ideally, as we move towards post-ethnicity, this will no longer be an issue.

I feel like this pressure still exists due to a phenomenon I will call "artistic/racial relativism," related to the exclusion of minorities in the artistic canon. It seems as though the art world is trying to make up for a history of oppression and/or exclusion by championing a select few contemporary minority artists (and female artists), yet the art institution still wields control over the context in which the art is shown, for example, during February there are numerous African-American art shows. Are these artists making detrimental choices concerning their careers by having work shown in "ethnic" shows? Or is it more important that they are getting their artwork into the world by any means they can?