Aboriginal artist Richard Bell is sitting on a bench in Kassel, Germany, enjoying the sunshine and crowds, when a couple from Austria approach him to ask about his work, Pay the Rent (2022), currently atop Kassel's Fridericianum museum as part of the international quinquennial exhibition Documenta.
Bell, 68, is genial, gracious and more than happy to chat about his large-scale metronomic digital sign, which displays a rapidly inflating number calculating the debt owed to First Nations people by the Australian government. In fact, he's made sure information about the work is hard to come by other than word of mouth.
"I want to be verbal about it. We've told some taxi drivers. They'll spread the word. I've got to go back to the barber shop again and I'll have a chat with them about it. I want to get people to talk about it," Bell says.
It is exactly these sorts of works and interactions that Indonesian artist collective ruangrupa — who have curated this year's Documenta — envisioned when they invited Bell to participate.
Why Documenta matters
Documenta has been one of the world's most important art events since it was first conceived by artist and curator Arnold Bode in 1955. Today it sits alongside the Venice Biennale in terms of scale and influence.
One of Bode's aims was to bring avant-garde art — which had been denigrated and confiscated under Nazism — back to a broad German public.
Before Documenta, the last exhibition of modern art in Germany had been the Nazi-designed Degenerate Art exhibition in Munich in 1937.
This propagandist exhibition was envisioned as a platform to shame, pillory and degrade any artist or artistic movement perceived to be at odds with the purification of German values and culture.
The Degenerate Art exhibition featured works by some of the 20th century's most-important artists, including Käthe Kollwitz, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky and Marc Chagall. Ironically, despite — or, perhaps, because of — its notoriety, the exhibition was seen by more than one million people.
Many of these same artists would be included in Bode's inaugural Documenta, which was held in Kassel's Fridericianum: a public museum that was one of the first of its kind globally when it opened in 1779.
The building was nearly completely destroyed by Allied bombing but, by 1955, it had been mostly restored, and this sense of optimism and recovery was also important to Kassel-born Bode.
Bode wrote that the aim of Documenta was not to present an overview of work produced in the 20th century, but to "reveal the roots of contemporary art in all areas".
This sentiment of showcasing art that is responding to the issues and concerns of its day has carried through each subsequent Documenta.
Documenta is now in its 15th iteration, and while previous outings have featured work by other Australian artists — including Gordon Bennett, Stuart Ringholt, Fiona Hall, Khadim Ali and Destiny Deacon — none were given the platform that Bell currently has.
International acclaim
Born in Brisbane in 1953, Richard Bell has been making art, and trouble, for decades now.
His work is unapologetically political, and has its roots in activism, which — for Bell — took flight in Redfern in the 1970s, and continues today with deliberately provocative artworks that call for Aboriginal self-determination and compensation.
"[Pay the Rent] represents a number calculating how much money the Australian government owes Aboriginal people — and that's just for the rent of the place. Because that is still our country. It always was, always will be Aboriginal land," Bell says.
"But we have to be smarter than that. We have to look for a solution, because nobody can ever afford to pay the kind of money that they actually owe.
Working across painting, video, installation, text and performance, Bell tackles everything from the erasure of Aboriginal experiences from Australian history to identity politics and the colonial complexities of Aboriginal art production in Australia.
Bell first came to significant attention in 2003, when he won the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award for his painting Scientia E Metaphysica (Bell's Theorem), which declared, "Aboriginal art. It's a white thing" — and was accompanied by a treatise outlining his theorem.
Despite being included in three Biennales of Sydney (1992, 2008 and 2016), the first National Indigenous Art Triennial at the National Gallery of Australia in 2007 and the 8th Asia Pacific Triennial at QAGOMA in 2015, among countless other significant group exhibitions, Bell's first major institutional solo show wasn't until 2021, at Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art Australia.
Internationally, things are a little different.
This year alone, in addition to Documenta, Bell has two other concurrent projects taking place in Europe.
One is his first major European solo exhibition, at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, which opened in late June, and for which Bell has also written a follow-up essay to his 2002 Theorem, titled "Contemporary Art. It's a White Thing".
The other is an exhibition and specially commissioned work for the Castello di Rivoli in Turin, Italy, where Bell has installed a replica of the shack he grew up in near Charleville, Queensland, before it was bulldozed in 1967 by local authorities.
Inside, a video shows an imagined teenage Bell facing down the bulldozer, like the protester who stared down the tanks in Tiananmen Square.
Then, in 2023, after COVID-enforced delays, Bell's Embassy (2013-ongoing), currently in situ in Kassel, will be erected in London, in Tate Modern's iconic Turbine Hall.
When asked how he feels about all this success, Bell concedes to feeling "mildly triumphant" but he's then quick to point out that, "if you let it go to your head, it'll f*** you up".
"The stars have aligned in a particular way, for me at this particular moment … But, mind you, there's been a lot of planning and preparation for this.
Back at the park bench, the Austrian couple chat easily with Bell for another five minutes, before thanking him for his impressive work and entreating him to bring it to Austria.
According to Bell, these kinds of encounters happen at least once a day, such is the provocation in his work: a provocation that has been amplified by this iteration of Documenta.
Collective action
Pay the Rent is just one of a suite of politically forthright works by Bell that are on show at Documenta this year. Inside the Fridericianum, Bell has a new series of paintings and an installation also on display.
Outside, staring back at the Fridericianum, Bell's Embassy sits squarely in the middle of Kassel's Friedrichsplatz, a location that in past Documentas has featured works by major artists including Walter de Maria (1977) and Joseph Beuys (1982).
Embassy pays homage to the original Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra, which marked its 50th anniversary this year.
Bell's version — which has been erected everywhere from Performa 15 in New York to the Venice Biennale in 2019 — functions as both a display space, where each iteration shows video works and other archival materials, and as a gathering space, hosting public talks and performances as well as more informal conversations.
Over Documenta's 100 days, Bell will be hosting a series of Embassy Talks, inviting artists and thinkers to discuss issues close to their hearts and their communities.
Among others, Bell has invited Aboriginal artist and activist Gary Foley and Anishinaabe-kwe curator and writer Wanda Nanibush, from the Art Gallery of Ontario, to take part.
He is particularly excited that the Brisbane-based Indigenous youth collective Digi Youth Arts will also be joining him here.
Members of the group met Bell at one of his exhibitions in 2019, after which they presented a response to his work.
"It was so powerful and emotional. Some people were brought to tears and I thought, f***ing hell, I'm going to take these kids to Documenta," Bell says.
"What they're doing — they're writing powerful material, speaking to colonisation, speaking to the wastefulness, speaking to the extractivism. They're doing all these things already. I'm just giving them a leg up."
As a political activist and one of the founding members of the Indigenous collective proppaNOW, Bell has always worked in this way.
For ruangrupa — who make history as the first artist collective to program Documenta — ideas of ecosystems, sharing, knowledge distribution and collectivism are also foundational to their practice, which they have used to imagine a Documenta unlike any other.
The significance of Documenta 15
As well as being the first artist collective to program Documenta, ruangrupa is also the first ever to come from the Asia-Pacific region and only the second non-European.
The late Nigerian curator, Okwui Enwezor, presented the paradigm-shifting Documenta 11 in 2002, which highlighted work by artists grappling with global geopolitics and the complexities of post-colonialism.
Documenta 15 looks set to shift the paradigm once again, both in its approach to curation and its artist line-up, and because of some of the responses and controversies it has provoked.
Taking inspiration from the practice of "lumbung", the Indonesian word for a communal rice barn, ruangrupa invited artists and artist collectives predominantly from Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and the Asia Pacific, to bring their work and way of working to Kassel.
Eschewing a static exhibition, Kassel is instead thrumming with artists cooking, tending gardens, hosting workshops and performances and exhibitions that are constantly, joyfully evolving.
None of this is surprising to Bell, who first worked with ruangrupa at the Jakarta Biennale in 2015.
"One hundred per cent, when I got the invitation, I f***ing knew that it was gonna be different to every other Documenta," Bell says.
"I knew that it would be dominated by artists from the Global South. That, in itself, makes a difference.
"The global south constitutes 90 per cent of the world's population and probably 90 per cent of the work here is from that 90 per cent — and I think that's what's problematic for the money side of the art world, because there are no household names in this exhibition."
Ruangrupa formed in Jakarta in 2000, and in the Documenta catalogue they explain how the idea of the lumbung — "where a community stores their harvests together, to be managed collectively as a way to face an unpredictable future" — evolved from a metaphor into a financial and philosophical approach to working together.
Since 2013, ruangrupa has been working with other Jakarta-based collectives to build "ekosistems" that the group says are based on an understanding that even a group of people cannot stand alone.
"They must purposefully play a part in their larger context," ruangrupa writes.
For ruangrupa in 2022, that larger context has included the global COVID-19 pandemic, climate change and the devastating impacts of globalisation, ongoing social injustices and even the recent war against Ukraine.
Bell is blown away by what ruangrupa has set out to do at Documenta.
"Traditionally, what happens at Documenta is followed up and reinforced by the rest of the art world, including the market.
"I'm f***ing really proud to be involved in it. Yeah, 'coz regardless of what anybody says, this will be the most talked-about Documenta ever."
In building their collective of collectives in the months leading up to Documenta, ruangrupa invited participants — called lumbung members — to organise into groups, called majelises, according to time zones.
They were then allocated an equal portion of the Documenta budget to decide how to spend.
This decentralised approach to programming and spending has seen new works programmed and other collectives invited to participate. Those new collectives in turn, have invited other collectives.
At last count more than 1,500 artists are living and working in Kassel as part of Documenta. By comparison, Documenta 14 in 2017 had 163 artists.
There's also a children's play centre in the Fridericianum and, in another wing of the museum, 40 artists are working and living in specially built dorms.
This group includes Tian Zhang, one of the co-founders of Western Sydney artist-run initiative (or ARI) Pari.
Rethinking museums
For the next 50 days, Zhang and fellow Pari members Joel Sherwood Spring, Naomi Segal and Hayley Coghlan will be living and working in the Fridericianum, alongside ruangrupa's educational collective, Gudskul.
Pari met Gudskul at the Dhaka Art Summit in February 2020, and that meeting led to a series of collaborations and online exchanges throughout the COVID-19 lockdowns.
"Going to Dhaka [so soon after opening our ARI] and meeting all of these other collectives — including Gudskul, including ruangrupa — allowed us to go, 'Actually, there is a different way of doing this', because the ARI model in Australia is really just the one model," says Zhang.
"Being able to come here, and to be surrounded by other collectives, knowing we're a bit of an anomaly back home, but here, everyone is. It's just amazing."
Before the Parramatta-based collective opened in October 2019, there were no independent or artist-run spaces in Western Sydney, Zhang says.
"There are some really great arts centres [in Western Sydney], but they're all connected to local councils," she says.
"And, while that allows access to certain resources, it also means that there's certain things that you can't do."
Gudskul invited Pari to Documenta to help co-facilitate a series of workshops, activities and conversations with their next batch of students, including members of collectives from Indonesia, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Australia.
Joining the cohort will be Marian Abboud and Maissa Alameddine from Western Sydney's Arab Theatre Studio.
"[Arab Theatre Studio] has been practising in Western Sydney for a long time and for one reason or another, I think, they haven't had that recognition that they really deserve. This moment at Documenta is a way of being able to open up these things to the art world," Zhang says.
"But also, for me, it's [about] remembering that [collectivism and collective practice] isn't new. It might be new for some, but there's people who've been doing this for a really long time, so [it's important] to make sure that that's recognised as well."
One of the most radical — and unexpected — aspects of Documenta for Zhang has been living in the Fridericianum.
"I've never had this sense of ownership over an institution before," she admits. "Even when I've worked within them, even when I've worked for them.
"And I think it's really interesting because a lot of museums are saying, 'You know, we want you to feel comfortable, we want you to feel safe, this is yours'. But, actually, they close the doors [at the end of the day].
"I think that is the provocation to museums: 'How do you actually make people feel comfortable in that space?' People who have been historically excluded from these sorts of places, who have only ever been represented as objects, not as living beings, and don't feel comfortable entering into these spaces."
Like Bell, Zhang's experience of Documenta has also been joyful and affirming.
"I think people are wanting something like this," Zhang says. "What's really noticeable about this, compared to other biennales or even exhibitions that I've been to, is that it's just so joyful and so accessible. But it's also just connected to life. It's not about art being this siloed thing that only certain people can access."
Controversy and criticism
While artists and Documenta-goers have been unequivocal in their support for ruangrupa's program, the event has not been without controversy.
Setting aside the larger art world's response to ruangrupa's curatorial rejection of what they describe as "European institutional agendas that [were] not ours to begin with", Documenta 15 has also faced accusations of anti-Semitism.
In January 2022, ruangrupa were accused of including artists that supported the anti-Zionist Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement, which the German government condemned as anti-Semitic in 2019.
Despite repeated denials, tensions escalated and attempts to address issues of racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia with public statements and a public discussion were also thwarted.
Then, in May, the venue set to host Palestinian collective The Question of Funding was broken into and vandalised with racist graffiti.
The German Minister for Culture, Claudia Roth, initially defended Documenta and the right to artistic freedom but, when a large-scale banner that included an anti-Semitic image — part of an artwork made by Indonesian collective Taring Padi in 2002 — was installed over the opening weekend, the condemnation from politicians and the media was swift.
Ruangrupa apologised for failing to notice the inflammatory image and the work was removed — but the incident only emboldened criticism of the collective's decentralised approach to Documenta.
In a review for the New York Times, Siddhartha Mitter observed that the German backlash "will only comfort scepticism toward this Documenta in the commercial art world".
And while he notes how hard making Documenta was for the participating collectives, he concludes: "It was worth the effort. We are fortunate to witness so much imagination, so much flourishing."
A new art world order?
Bell and Zhang are both unsure about what this Documenta will mean in the long-term, for both the art world and the institution itself.
"I think the message to the public and to the art world, that's been really clear. But I don't know. We'll just have to see whether the structures themselves will shift," Zhang says.
Bell doesn't want to look too far ahead.
"I'm living in the moment here. I'm basking in my glory," he jokes, but he also says this Documenta will provoke change, even if it is slow.
"Time will tell, but I'm more inclined to think that change comes incrementally. I think this [Documenta] is a significant incremental change. I think it is going to show the way for a lot of people."
But Bell's belief in the transformative potential of art has only been affirmed by his experiences in Kassel.
While he basks quietly in his well-earned glory, he really does have an eye on the future. Is there a lot to look forward to?
"Yes, I think so. But I try not to have expectations because they hardly ever materialise and could cause you anxiety. I just couldn't be f***ed bothering, speculating. So, I'll just wait for those moments to arrive."
Here at Documenta, one of those moments is well and truly arriving.
"I am so proud," Bell admits. "But you have to keep a lid on it, that's the Aboriginal way. You can only be so deadly for so long."
Documenta 15 runs until September 25 in Kassel, Germany.
