This paper analyzes the relation between the ideals of universality and globalization developed by the Biennials of Havana and Johannesburg, and the local contexts where those initiatives were put into practice. Both events are traditionally considered as the main antecedent of contemporary biennials. Furthermore, both enact a separation with Eurocentric ideas of modernity, generating a decentered and more critical artistic panorama. Without dismissing those elements, in this text I argue that the heritage of both biennials is expressed not just in the models of globalism they produced. The contradictions deriving from the complex articulation of those models and a local medium in transition, still bounded to national issues, constitute a central node to understand their evolution and to frame the coordinates of the present-day global art system.