Berlin, 21.06.2022 – WerteInitiative assesses the statements of those responsible at documenta and the covering-up of the antisemitic art installation as completely inadequate. The assurances previously voiced vehemently by director general Sabine Schormann as well as by the political office-holders that there would be no antisemitic artistic positions within the framework of documenta fifteen were demonstrably false. Consequences in terms of content and personnel must therefore now follow.
The art installation “People’s Justice” by the Indonesian artists’ collective “Taring Padi”, which contains antisemitic depictions, has been covered up and is now, according to the artists’ collective, a “monument of mourning” over “the impossibility of dialogue”. We regard this as an unspeakable reversal of perpetrator and victim and sharply condemn this approach.
The chairman of WerteInitiative, Elio Adler, on this: “The basis of this disaster is not a lack of dialogue, but antisemitism. Are Jews supposed to enter into dialogue and discuss with an open outcome in what form hatred against us is ‘all right’? The political office-holders were urgently warned for months beforehand that such scenes could occur. By merely covering up the installation, the work is stylised into an icon. It should be removed immediately.”
Israel-related antisemitism is disseminated in further exhibited works of art. The historically revisionist series of paintings “Guernica – Gaza”, in which the artist Mohammed Al Hawajri equates the actions of the Israeli army with Nazi Germany’s air raid on the Spanish town of Guernica, must likewise be taken down.
Elio Adler: “The concern of documenta fifteen to enter into dialogue with the global South is important and right. This does not, however, include disseminating antisemitism under the cloak of the high constitutional good of artistic freedom. Nor can it be justified by cultural perspectives.”
