In contemporary cultural spaces, visibility is often treated as the natural consequence of the existence of an artwork, an artist or an initiative: what is sufficiently relevant, original or recognised will eventually be seen, circulated or acknowledged.
This assumption obscures an essential part of the process.
A work does not become visible simply because it exists. It has to be selected, programmed, published, translated, recommended, funded, documented or relayed through structures capable of connecting it with audiences.
Cultural visibility is therefore less a state than a process.
It is produced through successive forms of mediation involving institutions, professionals, media organisations, digital platforms, distribution networks and publics.
The central question is therefore not only who decides what becomes visible, but how multiple mechanisms of selection and circulation combine to produce visibility.
Visibility as the outcome of a chain of mediation
Within the cultural sector, a work rarely moves directly from its producer to its audience.
Numerous actors intervene in between.
A programmer selects an artist. An institution decides to host an exhibition. An editor chooses a text. A media outlet devotes attention to an initiative. A platform recommends certain content. A professional network facilitates an invitation or collaboration.
None of these actors controls visibility on its own.
But each intervenes at a particular stage in its construction.
Visibility can therefore be understood as the outcome of a chain of mediation: selecting, contextualising, programming, publishing, distributing, recommending and circulating.
This perspective moves beyond the idea that some works are naturally visible while others remain inherently marginal.
Circulation also depends on the infrastructures to which they have access.
Selection already produces visibility
Every programme involves selection.
A festival cannot invite every artist. An institution cannot exhibit every work. A media organisation cannot cover every initiative. Even a digital platform has to organise attention among a vast quantity of content.
Selection is therefore unavoidable.
It becomes a cultural issue when we examine the criteria through which it operates.
Professional reputation, networks, available funding, institutional recognition, linguistic proximity, previous circulation and communicative capacity can all influence access to particular spaces.
This does not mean that artistic quality is irrelevant.
It means that judgements of quality themselves take place within particular professional, institutional and social environments.
Recognition is therefore never produced entirely outside the structures that allow a work to be seen, discussed and evaluated.
The infrastructures of recognition
Visibility also depends on material and institutional resources.
Being able to produce a work does not necessarily mean being able to circulate it.
An exhibition space, translation, a professional network, financial support, high-quality documentation or simply the time required to respond to open calls, develop partnerships and maintain a public presence may all be necessary.
These elements constitute an infrastructure of visibility.
It may be formal — institutions, markets, media, mobility programmes and residencies — or more informal, through personal and professional networks.
Unequal access to these infrastructures helps explain why some cultural scenes circulate more easily than others.
Visibility is therefore not only a matter of image or communication. It also depends on the material conditions that allow a cultural practice to enter circuits of recognition.
Unequal geographies of circulation
These infrastructures are unevenly distributed.
Some cities concentrate institutions, markets, specialised media, foundations, curatorial networks and financial resources capable of supporting international circulation.
Other territories may have active cultural ecosystems while enjoying much less access to the infrastructures that transform local activity into transnational visibility.
These differences produce particular geographies of recognition.
A work may be highly significant within its local context while remaining largely absent from international networks. Conversely, some practices may gain significant international visibility because they are already embedded in circuits with substantial capacity for dissemination.
This situation cannot be reduced to a simple opposition between “centre” and “periphery”.
Several centres may coexist, and emerging networks can gradually redirect established pathways of recognition.
But opportunities for circulation remain unevenly distributed.
Europe–Africa: visibility and asymmetries of circulation
These questions are particularly apparent in cultural relations between Europe and Africa.
African artistic scenes are obviously not a homogeneous whole, just as European institutions do not form a single system.
Nevertheless, there are significant differences in access to international funding, art markets, mobility programmes, translation infrastructures and far-reaching professional networks.
These differences shape the conditions under which cultural production circulates.
A work produced in an African context may sometimes become internationally visible after being selected by a biennial, gallery, museum or programme based elsewhere.
Such recognition may create new possibilities for circulation.
But it also raises another question: to what extent does international visibility still depend on passing through particular sites of legitimation?
The issue is not to oppose “external” recognition to “local” legitimacy.
It is rather to examine how different systems of recognition interact, and which infrastructures have the capacity to transform situated visibility into international visibility.
Digital environments do not eliminate filters
Digital environments have profoundly altered this organisation.
Artists, collectives and initiatives can now publish content directly and reach audiences without necessarily passing through a cultural institution or traditional media organisation.
This has considerably expanded the capacity for dissemination.
It has not, however, eliminated mechanisms of selection.
It has introduced new ones.
Platforms also organise attention through recommendation systems, preferred formats, engagement metrics and algorithmic logics.
Being online does not therefore automatically mean being visible.
A vast amount of content remains practically invisible despite being technically accessible.
The distinction between access and visibility becomes crucial here: content may be available to everyone without actually being encountered by many people.
Visibility as an economy of attention
This transformation introduces another resource: attention.
In an environment marked by an abundance of content, the problem is no longer simply being able to publish.
It is also becoming identifiable among a multitude of competing propositions.
Titles, images, short formats, recommendations, social media and editorial strategies all become part of a competition for attention.
Cultural actors increasingly have to produce not only their works or projects, but also the narratives through which those works become perceptible.
This situation can encourage new forms of editorial creativity.
It can also encourage simplification when complex projects have to be condensed into formats that are immediately understandable and shareable.
Visibility therefore becomes both a resource and a constraint.
Being visible is not the same as being recognised
A further distinction is necessary.
Visibility and recognition are not synonymous.
An artist may receive substantial media exposure without gaining lasting recognition in certain professional spaces. Conversely, a practice may enjoy strong recognition within a specialised network while remaining almost unknown to a wider public.
Visibility itself may also be positive, negative or ambivalent.
Being widely discussed does not necessarily mean being legitimised.
The analysis of cultural spaces should therefore distinguish between several levels: being accessible, being visible, being recognised, being legitimised and being able to convert recognition into durable resources.
These stages may reinforce one another, but they do not automatically coincide.
Examining infrastructures rather than only outcomes
Questioning cultural visibility therefore involves more than counting the artists represented in a programme or observing which content receives the most attention.
It also requires examining the conditions under which visibility is produced.
Who has the resources needed to participate in an international network? Who can translate their content? Who understands the codes of open calls? Who can document their work professionally? Which actors have intermediaries able to open access to particular spaces?
These questions shift the analysis.
They move us from visibility as an outcome to visibility as infrastructure.
The issue is no longer merely to observe that some practices circulate more widely than others, but to understand the mechanisms that make those differences possible.
Conclusion
International cultural visibility is neither spontaneous nor entirely controlled by any single actor.
It results from a succession of selections, mediations and decisions distributed across institutions, professionals, media organisations, platforms and publics.
These processes are themselves embedded in infrastructures and geographies that have unequal access to resources for production, dissemination and recognition.
Digital environments have transformed these mechanisms without eliminating them. New recommendation systems and forms of competition for attention have been added to institutional filters.
Understanding cultural visibility therefore requires looking beyond what is already in the foreground.
It means examining the networks, resources, intermediaries and structures that allow certain practices to circulate more widely than others.
The question “who decides?” therefore has no single answer.
Visibility is collectively produced, but within systems in which not all actors have the same power to produce it.
