TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Ruangrupa's Guernica moment
After all, Documenta, held once every five years since 1955, is one of the biggest art exhibitions in Germany, and this year it displayed the works of more than 1,500 artists over 100 days at 32 sites across the city of Kassel.
Change Size
W
hen the South Jakarta-based art collective Ruangrupa took up the offer to be the curator for German art exhibition Documenta, it certainly did not expect that today it would be mired in a high-profile controversy involving one of the most controversial topics in both arts and politics.
After all, Documenta, held once every five years since 1955, is one of the biggest art exhibitions in Germany, and this year it displayed the works of more than 1,500 artists over 100 days at 32 sites across the city of Kassel.
And being the first art collective to play the role of curator for the exhibition certainly brought a sense of pride to Ruangrupa.
All was well until a little-known group that called itself the Alliance Against Anti-Semitism Kassel posted in January a blog accusing members of the selection committee and some of the participating artists of “promoting a hatred of Israel” and supporting the Palestinian-led Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS).
BDS was branded anti-Semitic by the German parliament in 2019 and barred from receiving federal funds.
A number of German media outlets picked up on the criticism while officials issued statements condemning some artworks considered to be promoting anti-Semitism.
News magazine Der Spiegel called the affair an embarrassing spectacle, saying "the German cultural sector has a big problem".
"We are disgusted by the anti-Semitic elements publicly displayed at the Documenta 15 exhibition," Israel's embassy to Germany said in a statement.
German Culture Minister Claudia Roth also said this was where "artistic freedom finds its limits", as she urged the show's curators to "draw the necessary consequences".
The backlash was swift.
Last month, unknown vandals broke into the Palestinian exhibition space, leaving threatening graffiti scrawled on the walls.
Two days after the show opened to the public, one of the works on display by the Yogyakarta-based art group Taring Padi came under fire over depictions that both the German government and Jewish groups say went too far. On the offending mural is the depiction of a pig wearing a helmet emblazoned with "Mossad".
As a result of the ensuing controversy, Ruangrupa canceled a series of talks meant to address the allegation.
"A free and productive discussion [is] impossible under the current conditions," the art collective said in a statement.
And due to the firestorm of this anti-Semitic accusation, Ruangrupa caved in this week and resorted to what many deemed to be self-censorship and decided to remove the artwork from Taring Padi.
As an art collective coming from an emerging nation that not too long ago unshackled itself from colonialism, from a country that had officially supported the rights of the Palestinian people to their land and from a nation with no diplomatic ties to Israel, Ruangrupa certainly held itself to a different standard when it comes to the question of art and anti-Semitism.
This newspaper believes that anti-Semitism should have no place in modern society, yet if all expression of support toward the Palestinian people is branded anti-Semitic, then we lose the opportunity to have a meaningful debate about what the arts actually mean.
We applaud Ruangrupa for its courage under fire and we firmly stand behind it.
