The Saarland Museum’s Modern Gallery, in western Germany, announced last week that it has cancelled an exhibition of your work which was due to open in spring 2024. What happened?
On 24 November, my studio received a call from the director of the museum, announcing that she would likely be forced to cancel the exhibition, which we had been working on for three years. Given the current climate in Germany, I immediately assumed that the cancellation had to do with views that I have expressed in relation to the ongoing carnage in Israel-Palestine. Little did I know that the exhibition had in fact already been cancelled at that point, prior to any conversation with me.
Was the exhibition about Israel-Palestine?
The plan had been to show my work TLDR, a 13-channel video installation that features a community of sex work activists in Cape Town. In short, the exhibition had nothing to do with Israel-Palestine.
What were the reasons the museum gave for the cancellation?
When I finally got to speak to the museum’s director, she told me that the way I had publicly spoken out about the ongoing bombardment of Gaza was inappropriate. During a meeting of the Saarland Cultural Heritage Foundation, she explained, the rector of the local art academy had insisted that the exhibition could not go ahead given that I had, in his words, “maybe signed a letter in support of BDS [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, a Palestinian-led movement promoting economic sanctions against Israel].”
Have you signed a BDS letter?
Though I strongly support the democratic right to boycott, I am not a BDS supporter and I have not, as such, signed any BDS letters. I did once sign a letter that was written to protest a resolution that was passed in German parliament in 2019, one which sought to designate BDS as antisemitic. The letter protested against the criminalisation of BDS while clearly stating that its signatories were not all BDS supporters. It was signed by nearly 1,600 people, a good quarter of whom are – like myself – Jewish, including eminent Holocaust scholars and several rabbis.
In an official statement, the museum has since said it has decided “not to offer artists a podium who don’t recognise Hamas’s terror as a breach of civilisation”, nor to collaborate with artists who “consciously or unconsciously suspend the clear distinction between legitimate and illegitimate action” …
I have repeatedly and unequivocally condemned Hamas. I have repeatedly said that the 7 October attacks were unspeakable and horrific. Apparently, this is deemed insufficient. In the German context, the term Zivilisationsbruch (“breach of civilisation”) is used by scholars as a reference to the Shoah [the Holocaust]. In effect, the museum is arguing here that they can’t show my work because I have not acknowledged an equivalence between the Holocaust and the 7 October attacks. To demand that such an equivalence be pronounced, as a condition for exhibiting my work, is to effectively demand that I relativise the Holocaust. In order to comply, I would have to betray my fundamental understanding of the Shoah as a singular historical event. Need I point out the absurdity of Germans dictating to Jewish people how they should articulate their reactions to the heinous massacre of Jewish people at the hands of terrorists? What will come next? Will every Jewish person in this country be asked to retrospectively condemn the Shoah and unequivocally deny having empathy for the Nazi regime?
The notion that every progressive Jew in this country can be assumed to be harbouring antisemitism unless they publicly denounce Hamas is patently ridiculous. One is apparently guilty by default, until one declares oneself innocent. This reminds me of the post-9/11 climate, in which Arabs, Muslims and Sikhs who did not publicly condemn the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center were automatically suspected of condoning al-Qaida.
The museum’s official reasoning aside, there is a broader criticism that many people on the left did not pause to take in the enormity of the atrocities committed by Hamas on 7 October, and instead ploughed on with the same slogans, some of which have taken on a new, extremely threatening meaning. Is that criticism not fair?
The frenzy of judgment around when and how people have expressed their responses to the atrocities of 7 October is deeply polarising. It fails to acknowledge the fact that people process pain and trauma in a variety of ways. I would never have the gall to set a timetable for when, nor dictate how, people should respond to extreme violence and mass death. I personally felt speechless for nearly a week after the Hamas attacks. I was in a state of absolute shock. Others responded more immediately, some before it was even possible to anticipate the grotesque slaughter that would take place.
One curator, Edwin Nasr, posted a collage on social media of images showing people fleeing the Supernova festival, next to the phrase “Poetic Justice” …
Edwin Nasr had been invited to speak at a symposium curated by myself and Michael Rothberg, who holds a chair in Holocaust studies at UCLA. After issuing an apology for their deeply callous Instagram story [see footnote], Edwin got in touch with Michael and I to withdraw from the symposium, out of a concern that their presence could be damaging to other participants. A few days later, the symposium – which would have taken place in Berlin this week – was cancelled, along with so many other cultural events in Germany.
One Israeli participant has since said it was right to postpone that symposium, and the cancellation of similar events seems to have also been motivated by concern for a traumatised Jewish community in Germany …
Many progressive Jews in this country have come to believe that Germany’s increasingly entrenched habit of weaponising false charges of antisemitism against intellectuals and cultural workers of various descriptions, in the absence of credible evidence, has little to do with a genuine concern for the safety of Jewish lives, and can best be understood as serving to promote Germany’s image of itself as a forward-looking country that has managed to overcome its own deeply antisemitic and genocidal past. Hollowed-out accusations of antisemitism are commonly deployed to silence, stigmatise, sideline and de-platform not only progressive Jews but also Palestinians, Muslims, Arabs and others who are “other” to white Germany. The Jewish American writer Susan Neiman refers to this rabid phenomenon as “philosemitic McCarthyism”.
‘McCarthyism’ implies a complete cancellation and removal of platforms. Your exhibition has been cancelled, but the decision has been criticised in Germany’s largest art magazine and you were interviewed at length in the local Saarland newspaper …
While my exhibition and the symposium have been cancelled, I don’t consider myself a cancelled person. I still have a voice. I plan to continue using it vigorously. I am fortunate to be in a position – partially because I am both white and Jewish – that makes it possible for me to continue speaking out. Many who face similar allegations are too precarious, in one way or another, to effectively defend themselves. It can be incredibly expensive and emotionally depleting to overturn such allegations once German journalists and politicians are circulating them.
In Germany, there is a fear that Erinnerungskultur – the culture of commemorating and atoning for the Holocaust – is under attack from both the far right and the postcolonial left, and that once you start chipping away at it, it will crumble altogether …
Germany’s celebrated memory culture is no longer consistently true to the good intentions that are at its foundations. For Erinnerungskultur to continue to remain meaningful, it will be necessary to consider the fact that Germany is a very different country in 2023 than it was in 1945. A large portion of this country’s citizens and inhabitants are not white, do not have Nazi ancestry and have arrived in Germany since the Holocaust. In other words, there are many Germans who must contend – in their relationship to this nation – not only with the legacy of the Shoah, but also with other historical traumas. To remain relevant and productive, Erinnerungskultur must be broadened to register and accommodate the diversity of identities and lived experiences that jostle for dignity in contemporary Germany.
The artist Hito Steyerl recently suggested that the Israel-Palestine war might encourage artists to pause and consider whether their roles may not be as activists but as mediators. What function can artists play in this conflict?
I would never deign to suggest that there is only one way forward for artists. What I think can be predicted at this point, without too much speculation, is that German institutions are likely to increasingly avoid working with artists who are politically engaged. The future for contemporary art in Germany may look very much like the past, a past in which platforms were until recently overwhelmingly preserved for artists who were compliant and not prone to asking critical questions, a past in which the prioritisation of whiteness went largely unchallenged.
• This article was amended on 8 December 2023 to include a link to Edwin Nasr’s apology, in which they said they were unaware of the massacre at the Supernova festival when posting a meme on 8 October mocking partygoers seen running from Hamas fighters paragliding towards them; Nasr said the comment was meant to express indignation at people partying near the Gazan border.
