Projects instead of conventional art. Collectives, where otherwise big names are emblazoned. The documenta fifteen fulfills the expectations of its unexpectedness.
Time is an important factor. Anyone who visits this documenta will not only be presented with a painting here and a sculpture there while strolling past.
Artistic processes of collectives are at the center of documenta fifteen (June 18 – September 25) in Kassel. It’s about the collective happiness of people, the rights of refugees, the possibility of participation, skills dormant in communities, practiced hospitality, forms of resistance using art.
It is not curated by an individual but by a collective. The Ruangrupa group comes from Indonesia. The Indonesian word for a rice barn is “lumbung,” in the island nation a communal barn for surplus crops. The documenta is also about “practicing lumbung together”. First glimpses of art and projects.
Politics is taking hold
The Fridericianum – the central point among the 32 individual locations – houses archives that document artistic and political work in various countries in videos, photos, posters and objects: the fight for women’s rights in Algeria, against discrimination against Roma in Hungary or apartheid in South Africa, the Black Lives Matter movement.
The “gudskul” has moved into the ground floor, a communal living and working space for the collectives that collectively designed this documenta. With a bit of luck, visitors can watch them working, cooking, hanging out or singing karaoke.
There are also pictures – despite many fears – to see: the huge four-part “Birth” by the Hungarian Tamás Péli, numerous works by the Australian Richard Bell, colorful textile collages by Migra-Tas from Poland. Brit Daniel Baker crocheted a “survival blanket” out of cut silver rescue blankets.
“Quantum Time Capsule” in the underpass
In the documenta hall, the tour begins in a slum in Nairobi, where the Wajukuu Art Project has erected a porch made of rusty corrugated iron. Two sculptures float face down in a cocoon of twigs above a pile of sand beneath which a mirror is hidden. Crooked kitchen knives nestle against a skin of oil-smeared chains like feathers.
In front of the hall, members of the group Taring Padi from Indonesia are sawing the sticks for their brightly colored cardboard dolls – there are already hundreds in the lawn. In the Ottoneum Natural History Museum, nature is reclaiming architecture in South Korea.
Skate park and floor installation
The Britto Arts Trust Project from Bangladesh has recreated a market hall in which all the goods are inedible: the soup cans are made of fabric, milk cartons are made of metal, fruit is ceramic. The collective Baan Noorg from Thailand has built a skater park. Instar from Cuba document the government’s dealings with critics in a drawn wall newspaper and with stocking masks on poles.
In the ballroom of a vacant hotel, artists from Johannesburg have created a 100 square meter floor installation, a kind of 3D map of a decolonized globe. In the “Ruruhaus” local artists and initiatives present themselves, in an underpass visitors can preserve stories and memories in a “quantum time capsule” for eternity.
The documenta team has placed a focus of this edition on an old part of the city that is characterized by industrial and working-class districts. In Bettenhausen, the old indoor pool east and a former production site were developed. A wasteland serves as a cultural breeding ground and religion and voodoo collide in an old church.
With “Le Maaya Bulon”, the Fondation Festival sur le Niger from Mali has created an area for storytelling, exchange, making music and listening on the industrial Hübner site. Hospitality is considered an important value in the culture of the country. This thought is also concretely expressed by the Chinese collective Boloho, who redesigned the factory’s old canteen with their works consisting of screens, drawings, photo and video installations – and cooked for them.
Paintings in the old indoor pool
In the Bauhaus clinker of the disused indoor pool and on the meadow in front of it, Taring Padi installed his work, known as an archive, as a 22-year retrospective. In the former swimming pool, the group uses large-format paintings, printed flags, figures and objects to address the massacre for which the later dictatorial President Haji Mohamed Suharto was responsible, for which it is estimated that up to three million people fell victim. In front of the building stands a huge gathering of wayang kardus, life-size figures made of painted cardboard, an anti-regime demonstration with views of events and implications.
The documenta location WH22, an old cultural area, should attract particular attention. The Palestinian group The Question of Funding, which sparked an anti-Semitism debate about the documenta, is also exhibiting there. In his “Guernica Gaza” series, Mohammed Al Hawajri, for example, combines images of attacks by the Israeli army on the Palestinian territory with classic motifs by Millet, Delacroix, Chagall and van Gogh.
The series title makes a connection to the painting ‘Guernica’ by Pablo Picasso – it was created in 1937 in response to the destruction of the Spanish city of Guernica by an air raid by Nazi Germany’s ‘Legion Condor’.
According to curator Markus Ambach, for the first time local artists are also taking part in a documenta on a significant scale with the project “One Landscape”. In his studio in a former boat rental on the Fulda, Rene Wagner, for example, devotes himself to high-gloss winner trophies from the world of sport and staid civil society – and their injuries. “Everyday culture is taken seriously as culture here,” says Ambach.
In the immediate vicinity, the Off-Biennale Budapest collective has set up an imaginary playground. The “Allesbrücke”, which was created together with a Kassel school, invites you to play and interact with climbing walls, slides and sandpits. With her textile “Daydreaming Workstation”, Eva Kotátková explores the fantastic connections between dreams and daydreams.
A summer stage made of clay
Then the contrast: on the large Karlswiese opposite, the Nest Collective from Nairobi draws attention to the destruction of the environment and markets in African countries with their installation “Return To Sender”, consisting of textile waste and electronic waste. Cao Minghao & Chen Jianjun from Chengdu in China have erected a black, unbearably hot tent inside in front of the stately baroque facade of the orangery, with which they point out the social inequalities of the people.
In the north of the city, a Fulda tributary is the venue for documenta fifteen. There, a summer stage made of clay and other sustainable materials stretches over the ancestor with a handful of seats made of logs. The Indian mason, architect and teacher Sourabh Phadke designed it for the Palestinian artist Jumana Emil Abboud. The stage will be activated regularly for performances and open-air cinema over the next 100 days.
Director General Sabine Schormann presented herself as colorful as the World Art Exhibition itself at the opening press conference. She wore a tunic in the colorful documenta fifteen design. What will remain of this year’s show? “Who knows,” she said. The curatorial collective Ruangrupa also leaves that to the process.
Preview days of documenta fifteen have been since Wednesday. Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth, Hesse’s Prime Minister Boris Rhein and the Ambassador of the Republic of Indonesia, Arif Havas Oegroseno, are expected to attend the official opening this Saturday (18 June).
Alongside the Venice Biennale, the documenta is the most important presentation of contemporary art. It takes place every five years and traditionally lasts 100 days, ending on September 25th. Even before the opening, the organizers had sold 54,000 tickets.
– “documenta fifteen Handbuch”, book accompanying the exhibition, by Ruangrupa (ed.), Hatje Cantz Verlag Berlin 2022, 320 pages, ISBN 978-3-7757-5282-4, 25 euros
– “Go, find, share. An illustrated companion book to documenta fifteen”, by Ruangrupa (ed.), Hatje Cantz Verlag Berlin 2022, 96 pages, ISBN 978-3-7757-5283-1, 15 euros
– “Documenta fifteen Majalah lumbung. A magazine about harvesting and sharing”, by Ruangrupa (ed.), Hatje Cantz Verlag Berlin 2022, 320 pages, ISBN 978-3-7757-5285-5, 30 euros
– “Tell documenta fifteen lumbung”, by Harriet C. Brown (ed.), Hatje Cantz Verlag Berlin 2022, ISBN 978-3-7757-5286-2, 18 euros (dpa)