Art and Politics

Are good neighbours too much to ask?

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It seems that in recent years the majority of biennales, through the lofty chorus of their titles and curatorial rationales, with the curator as sage, the artist as advocate and the artwork’s self-declared role of ‘interrogation’ or ‘confrontation’, collectively presume to apprise, offset and/or enlighten us about our current global travails. These include the socio-political, the economic and the environmental, if not more, implying that art can absolve us and correct the world: art as theology, panacea, salvation.

The most recent example of this is Adam Szymczyk’s documenta 14, split in 2017 between Kassel and Athens. Its double act was announced at the height of rancour between Germany and Greece, calling attention to Europe’s economic, migration and democratic crises and its violent progeny of racism, re-emerging nationalism and rampant capitalism. Entitled ‘Learning from Athens’ Szymczyk proposed a documenta that ‘interrogates [there’s that word] the position of the institution by reversing the role of host that it has grown so accustomed to, instead shaping an exhibition in a context where it is a guest…’1 In doing so, of course, he was making a political point about the hegemony of Germany within the European Union and its browbeating of Greece, as the weakest member, over its economic vandalism and political obstinacy. (He has described documenta as ‘the equivalent of the international art world’s conscience’.2 —my emphasis.) Szymczyk has form here. His 2012 Berlin Biennale was roundly chastised by critics for its indulgent Left politics and attachment to the fantasia of the then Occupy movement. Reports indicate that the Athenians did not take too lightly to the idea of sharing, accusing the title of being ‘condescending’, launched amid accusations... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline

Rayyane Tabet, Colosse Aux Pieds D’Argile, 2015. 16 marble and sandstone columns, 19 marble and sandstone bases, 292 concrete cylinders,
each column 30 x 15cm diameter, installation 1500 x 600cm. Courtesy the artist. Collection Aishti Foundation. Photograph Sahir Uğur Eren.

Ali Taptik, Friends and Strangers, 2017. 4 archival pigment prints, folio wall paper, 6 x 4m, 3 archival pigment prints
120 x 120cm. Produced with the support of SAHA – Supporting Contemporary Art from Turkey. Photograph Sahir Uğur Eren;