Shadi Habib Allah (Lofoten International Art Festival, Norway) Shadi Habib Allah, M1, 2022, HD video, color, four-channel sound, 15 minutes. What was it that made this edition so utterly threatening to so many different constituencies? Was it the exhibition’s nonchalant sweeping aside of “the art system,” its prioritization of non-predatory collective and collaborative practices, its refusal to pander to the elite coterie of decision-makers and power players that usually benefits most from the extreme visibility of the mega-show? Or was it Ruangrupa’s outright disdain for the inflated art products held dear at the top of the market-the curatorial collective’s complete lack of interest in entertaining categories such as “artistic autonomy” and “individual genius”-that got so many so hot under the collar? Might the tsunami of anxiety and defensiveness that this edition unleashed perhaps be explained by its insistent shifting of agency to the Global South, its joyful validation of liberatory practices that many in the Global North prefer to dismiss? Whether we’re ready to admit it or not, the disruptive force of Documenta 15-its throwing into question of what art can do (and for whom), along with its pointed and multivalent challenge to business as usual-made it every bit as groundbreaking and future-shaping as Okwui Enwezor’s Documenta 11 of twenty years ago. Long before Documenta 15 opened, Ruangrupa’s curatorial vision had been broadly reviled by a loose coalition of right-wing agitators, conservative politicians, neoliberal apologists, clickbait journos, and art-world influencers who made it their collective mission to sabotage the exhibition-at times literally. Installation view, Rainer-Dierichs-Platz, Kassel. Dan Perjovschi, Horizontal Newspaper (detail), 2022, ink on asphalt.
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