Kassel, July 16, 2022 – After a long controversy over this the presence – in the prestigious five-year international contemporary art exhibition of Kassel‘Documenta’ – of a work with contents blatantly anti-Semitesdirector, Sabina Schormannshe eventually resigned.
The storm, triggered already at the opening of the exhibition, had been going on for weeks and, before the director opted to leave, the work accused of containing anti-Semitic symbols and drawings it had been covered with a cloth and subsequently removed. The work, of political denunciation, of the Indonesian collective of artists Paddy Fang is a large mural on a banner, entitled ‘Peoplès Justice’ (popular justice). According to the artists, cited by ArtNet magazine, he wanted to remember the victims of the bloody Indonesian dictator Suhartoin power until 1998. But one of grotesque figure that populates the crowded scene portrays a pig in military uniform with a neck scarf with the Star of David and on the helmet the ‘Mossad’ sign, the Israeli foreign intelligence service. In the same crowded mural of political-social criticism, another of the figures has a fierce face, a bowler hat on his head with the symbol of the ‘Ss’ from which emerge the ‘payot’, the curls worn on the sides of the head by ultra-Orthodox Jews.
Document and protests
Documenta is the most important contemporary art review in Europe together with the Venice Biennale. Every five years, since 1955, he has enlivened the quiet German town of Kassel in Hesse. There are over 1,500 artists on display for each edition. This year it was the curator of the 15th edition Ruangrupa, a collective of artists and creatives born in 2000 in Indonesia, like the offending work and its group of authors. Without prejudice to the freedom of expression in art, that image had gone too far, both the German government and the German and international Jewish organizations protested. The anti-Semitic content did not escape the Documenta board of directors in the first place, which expressed its “profound bewilderment” immediately after the inauguration, stating that it wanted to terminate the contract with the managing director Schormann.
After protest of the Israeli embassy in Germany, who expressed ‘disgust’, the offending work was covered up. Then, after a few days, it was removed. But this remedial gesture, together with the apologies of the director Schormann and the authors of the work themselves, were judged to be belated, as the German Jewish community contested. And the removal was not enough to close the controversy which he had started editing before Documenta 15 was inaugurated, when the participation in the art fair of a collective of Palestinian artists called The Question of Funding, linked to the international movement for the boycott, was noticed of Israel Bds. The latter was banned from federal funding in 2019 by vote of the Bundestag, the German federal parliament.
A blow to the prestige of one of the most important contemporary art forums in the world, which made Schormann’s resignation, announced today, inevitable.