“The cultural field becomes that of political action itself, that in which collective initiatives are undertaken”

2023-11-11 07:00:32

In 2024, the 60th Venice Biennale will be called “Stranieri Ovunque” (“foreigners everywhere”), a title with immediate international political resonance. In 2022, the Berlin Biennale was called “Still Present!” » (“always present”) and was dedicated to the memory and traumas of the 20th century. The curator was the artist Kader Attia, founder in 2016 of La Colonie (the word was crossed out), a bar which was until 2021 one of the main places for debate in Paris. A month ago, the project of the Ship-Future : the construction of a boat intended to rescue migrants in the Mediterranean which would be placed under the European flag. The idea was launched by the Urban Resources Exploration Center (Peru), founded in 2012 by the landscaper Gilles Clément and the artist and political scientist Sébastien Thiéry. It is supported by cultural institutions, MuCEM in Marseille, Festival d’Avignon, Théâtre de la Ville in Paris, and national drama centers.

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These events have one thing in common: the determining presence of political concerns in the field of visual arts. This was not the case at the end of the 20th century. When, in 1996, the Center Pompidou mounted the exhibition “Facing History”, the subtitle specified “The modern artist facing the historical event (1933-1996)”. Modern, not contemporary. Indeed, at that date, political subjects were far from being dominant in the workshops. However, continuing “Facing History” until 2023 would now require double or triple the number of venues and artists as this inflection is one of the major characteristics, undoubtedly the main one, of recent creation. In the meantime, the neoliberal fable of the end of history has collapsed and everyone knows what state the world is in.

African-American artists finally considered

In France, the phenomenon is increasingly visible. Just three examples. In 2021, as part of the “Decolonial Expression(s)” cycle, the castle of the Dukes of Brittany, in Nantes, received ironic allegorical installations in which Romuald Hazoumè inscribes daily life in Benin, where he was born and lives and works. This year, the European House of Photography in Paris hosted the portraits and self-portraits of Zanele Muholi, who campaigns in South Africa for LGBTQIA+ rights. As for the 16-meter-long panoramic view of the cliff of Bâmiyân, a Buddhist sanctuary ravaged by the Afghan Taliban in 2001, which Pascal Convert photographed, it has continued to be exhibited since 2016, from the Guimet Museum to the Louvre-Lens (Pas -de-Calais), where he must remain for four years. These works have nothing in common with each other, except the desire to alarm and resist.

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