2023-11-24 22:32:15
Contemporary art
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The war between Hamas and IsraeldossierPolarizing the cultural field, the conflict has led to dismissals, cancellations and other censorships of publishers, artists or curators. Already marked by incidents in 2022, Documenta, one of the most important events for international contemporary art, is at the heart of the storm.
In Kassel, Germany, Documenta, one of the most important contemporary art events in the world which is held every five years, has just come to a new halt. The team responsible for selecting the next commissioner for the 2027 edition has resigned collectively. There is “an emergency to organize a substantive public debate in Germany, before being able to relaunch any conceptual process for the next edition” these four personalities from the international art world informed Libération: the Cameroonian exhibition curator Simon Njami, former artistic director of the Dakar Biennale, the Chinese Gong Yan who directs the Power Station of Art, the only public museum of contemporary art in China, the Franco-Colombian María Inés Rodríguez currently curator at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo, and the German curator Kathrin Rhomberg.
This fundamental debate concerns Germany’s position vis-à-vis the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but also, naturally, its own past. And the least we can say is that since October 7, the climate has become particularly tense across the Rhine, even if in recent weeks we have also witnessed dismissals or cancellations in the rest of the world: the arrival of the editor-in-chief of the American magazine Artforum, fired on October 27 for having signed an open letter alongside 8,000 other personalities from the art world
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