Maram Stern, speaking about the one that ended three weeks ago documenta fifteen in Kassel. Anti-Jewish works of art were openly shown, Stern wrote in a guest article for the Rheinische Post, which appears in Düsseldorf (Monday).
“Jews portrayed as pigs, Jews with buck teeth, greedy eyes and – especially perfidious – SS runes, you can’t dig much deeper into the box of anti-Semitic imagery,” says Stern. Such a picture is unbearable – no matter where it hangs.
The 15th edition of the art exhibition documenta had been shaken before and during its term by ever new allegations of anti-Semitism. Shortly after the opening in mid-June, a work with anti-Semitic imagery was discovered and dismantled. Even after that, works with anti-Jewish stereotypes were found. The curatorial collective of the documentaRuangrupa, who is accused, among other things, of being close to the Israel boycott movement BDS.
His criticism is not aimed at the decision to transfer the artistic direction to a collective from Indonesia, Stern continued. He thinks it is extremely welcome “to prominently include the perspective of the ‘Global South'”. He also criticized that “even the obvious scandal that the discovery of the first anti-Jewish picture should have triggered is not sufficient for a general awareness of the problem”. After two thousand years of anti-Semitism in Europe, with the Holocaust as the catastrophic low point, he has no sense of generosity.
Source: Nachrichten
