Art and Catastrophe
Renata Salecl
The last decade has been marked by numerous catastrophes in which the West has intervened with humanitarian aid. When the country in crisis became the focus of world media attention, the artists from those places, too, got the chance to have their fifteen minutes of fame, or maybe a more permanent penetration of the Western art market. However, the possibility of securing a place in this highly competitive market is slim unless an artist from the so-called “Third World” emerges at a moment when the West has interest in his or her particular country, and the artist is market-savvy enough to produce work that fits the West’s expectations for art from the developing world. Ilya Kabakov nicely described the tension between the Western art world and non-Western cultures by pointing out that the Western art world is like a fast train that travels through different countries. In these remote places, people stand on the platforms and hope that they will be able to catch the train. However, the train rarely stops; and even if it does stop, there are no spaces available. Some people, nonetheless, manage to board the train and then desperately look for empty seats. When a seat by chance opens up and the person sits down, the fellow passengers look at the newcomer with disdain and comment: “Why did you not sit down earlier. And why did you look so desperate – you should have a smile on your face! We are always happy to get new people on board.”
Part of today’s multicultural ideology is that the Western art world constantly discovers new places that then become temporarily “in fashion” (in the last decade: Eastern Europe, then Asia, Africa, and now maybe Israeli/Palestinian artists will make it onto the center stage). It is well known that Chinese restaurants in Europe usually adapt the taste of their food to that which they guess is preferred in a particular country. Is the same logic at work in the art world, i.e., do Third World artists try to guess what kind of art Westerners would like to see? Russian artist Afrika, for example, became very attractive for the Western art market when, in his famous series of Soviet-style flags, he combined Communist memorabilia with Disney figures and other iconography embraced by Americans. Chinese artists, too, have been adept at producing work that somehow reflects their national character while at the same time pleasing the Western eye.
However, the paradox in this game of guessing the desire of the other is that the West wants to see nothing but its own reflection in the Third World (of course, with some added spice from the local community). This is especially the case when the West suddenly decides that something that the Third World does not perceive as art might actually have an artistic value in the West. This happened in the case of Koffi Quaku, an artisan from the Ivory Coast, who was discovered some years ago by an anthropologist researching the tribal customs in his village. The anthropologist realized that this artisan had been making perfect wooden replicas of Western goods (portable computers, men’s suits, shoes, etc.). Exhibited in American art galleries, these objects were suddenly discovered as works of art. However, it is crucial that these objects were not initially perceived as art objects, but were simply the attempt of a person from a developing country to come to terms with something that was other to him. One can guess that a Western artist making wooden replicas of consumer objects would need to do something much more shocking. One can imagine Chris Ofili’s Madonna-type images might be perceived as an example of African art, but when the artist adds elephants dung to them they become something that makes them art in the Western sense. Similarly, one can imagine that if a Third World artist were to exhibit a pierced liver, we would guess that he is engaging in some type of local ritual, whereas when Stephen Shannabrook does this in his work San Sebastian it is accepted as art. In this context, it was encouraging – even quite radical – that the last Documenta gave a place to a number of artist’s from developing countries, and tried to abolish any ethnic hierarchy or distinction while preserving regional specificity. Nevertheless, even in the official Documenta Short Guide, for example, Georges Adeagbo was presented as an artist who was discovered by chance by a French curator and whose work then came to be perceived as art work in the West. And in another example, Isek Kingelez’s work may appear very pleasing to the West because he offers a spectacle of an ideal world without racial, social and economic divides, which is precisely an image of the world that the West wants to see.
The way emerging Third World artistic production is perceived in the Western market strangely parallels the way the West evaluates its priorities for humanitarian aid. At the time of the war in Bosnia, when refugees flooded neighboring countries, the Croatian writer Slavenka Drakulic aptly reflected on the problem of humanitarianism. Drakulic remembered that when she donated clothes to the refugees, she never gave any shoes with high heels. Going through her closet, she always had in mind a picture of a refugee who would need only comfortable clothes and heavy walking shoes. But people who have been uprooted from their homes and placed in overcrowded refugee camps often desire precisely such luxury goods. For outside observers, such desires are hard to understand and tolerate, since it goes against their perception of what the victim might need and how he or she should look. (During the recent humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan we will recall how food airdrops contained the American ideal of a nutritious meal for children – peanut butter and jelly – which many Afghans had no idea what to do with).
Humanitarian activists like to invoke Louis Pasteur’s saying: “Don’t tell me who you are, or what your story is. Tell me what your suffering is.” But as soon as the other starts to act in a way that goes against the perception of how innocent victims should behave, helpers often go away and search for more “proper” victims. Humanitarianism is very much linked today to “fashionable causes,” and countries that are not in the loop of current media interest quickly lose support. (At the time of the war in Afghanistan, for example, North Korea suffered a significant drop in foreign aid.) Those in need of help try very hard to guess how they should present themselves in order to be able to obtain aid. Today, recipients of aid need to be quick to learn the language the sponsors speak. The catchwords are: human rights, civil society, democracy, multiculturalism, post-colonialism, women, children, and minority rights. Today, some people from developing countries are well-versed in using these words when talking with foreign sponsors; however, they also know that much of the money they are supposed to receive ends up in the hands of the so called “Marriott Brigade” – the Western advisors and other helpers who travel from one fancy hotel to another.
This same logic is at work in contemporary art. While Western art dealers might feel compassionate, they are rarely genuinely interested in what goes on in the Third World art scene: the dealers’ interest is primarily to find art work that will perfectly fit the stereotype that the West already has in regard to how Third World art should look. And when a non-Western artist does not fit into this stereotype, he or she quickly becomes perceived as uninteresting. When Israeli artist Tzibi Geva was invited to participate in international art shows, he was often typecast as a Mediterranean artist. However, when Geva exhibited artwork that uses Palestinian Keffiyeh, his work suddenly became uncanny. Geva likes to point out that during the period of the formation of the Israeli state, the first Israeli settlers appropriated Keffiyeh as their own symbol, which was supposed to represent manliness and affinity with the earth. Geva’s use of Keffiyeh in his art is a highly political gesture, especially at a time when the divide between Israel and Palestine has reached dramatic proportions. But this art also allows us to grasp how contingent national symbols are and how the “us and them” divide is essentially a mask that tries to cover the fact that our own identity is already marked by inconsistency, i.e., marked by lack and antagonism, which is why we often create national fantasies by either clinging to a particular national symbol or trying to appropriate someone else’s.
At a time when the world is experiencing numerous new catastrophes, when the divide between rich and poor becomes greater and greater, and when, under the guise of various fights against terror, bombs and bread are dropped at the same time, Western art machinery seems to be playing the role of a humanitarian who distributes trinkets to Third World artists. Here the Western art market follows the usual multicultural logic, in which the other can be admired only as long as he or she remains the “good” other, i.e. a victim. As soon as the other acts in the way that goes against the Western perception of how he or she should behave, he or she quickly becomes perceived as the enemy. (Here, we can recall how immigrants are often at the same time accused of being lazy and of stealing our jobs.) Proper tolerance for the other means that we need to accept that the other will not be molded to our desires; which also means that we need to embrace not only the uncertainty about who the other is, but also how our interaction with him or her will change us. But does the Western art market want to share its piece of cake?
Renata Salecl
