As things stand, we are now twenty months into a genocide – one to which Denmark also actively contributes. But while we live and the people of Gaza die, through days that constantly surpass themselves in the scale of their disasters and nauseating justifications for the atrocities, there are also those who resist.
Towards the end of 2024, a group of Palestinian-based artists – Tasneem Shatat, Fidaa Ataya, and Andreas Ibrahim – announced, in collaboration with the Al Risan Art Museum (The Forbidden Museum) in Palestine, an exhibition that turns the traditional biennial format inside out. Instead of building and bringing together expensive national pavilions in a single exclusive location, the Gaza Biennale is an open invitation to exhibit Palestinian artists in self-initiated pavilions across the world.
As yet, twelve pavilions have heeded the call, from South Africa and Turkey to Canada. The venue All all all, a Copenhagen-based exhibition platform run by Klara Li Scheutz and Sif Lindblad, will host the Danish Pavilion, which opens on 7 June and presents works by Jehad Jarbou, Yasmeen Al Daya, Ghanem Al-Din, and Aya Jouha. All are based in Gaza and were selected by All all all from among the approximately fifty artists invited by the organisers to take part in the biennale.
Exhibiting artists and works from a region ravaged by bombings is among the most obviously necessary acts you can possibly carry out in terms of representation, but also a task that involves many aspects – curatorial, emotional, logistical – fraught with controversy and very real, tangible impossibilities.
How do you do go about mounting an exhibition from an area in the grips of acute disaster?
Klara Li Scheutz: We’ve had as much contact as possible with all the artists, but for obvious reasons our communication is unreliable. For instance, Aya Jouha hasn’t replied to our last three messages. And the whole thing becomes a sensitive balancing act. Obviously, the fact that the art can actually make it all the way here is a mutually positive thing – for us, for the artists, for the audiences.
But how much does it really matter to the artists exactly what we show and how we show it, when bombs are constantly falling around them? It’s a difficult, delicate process. We want to involve the artists as much as possible, to obtain their approval regarding reproductions and choice of works, and at the same time it feels unthinkable to impose more work on them.
How do you think works arising out of a backdrop of active war will come across within the framework of a small exhibition space in inner Copenhagen and a local audience in high spirits as they bask in the delights of summer?
Sif Lindblad: We’ve thought about that a lot, especially about the limits surrounding our ambitions for representation. For example, we present Aya Jouha’s paintings in the form of a video installation from her studio in Gaza because the actual pieces cannot be shipped out of the area. The works are very intense, and how do we present them without it becoming distasteful? In her context, in her studio, the works constitute a virtually 1 to 1 representation of reality, but how do we translate that into our context?
Jouha’s practice very much stems from the killing of her brother, and many of the works depict him: some in the form of classical portraits but others in the form of brutal scenarios, such as scenes of torture. And the extreme intensity of these paintings makes us question whether they should even be shown in this context. Should we choose something else? It’s so very difficult to make decisions on behalf of people who only have limited opportunities to be involved.
Have you encountered any resistance prompted by your choice to engage in a project and a debate that already divides people?
KLS: Well, securing funding certainly hasn’t been easy. We have received support from the Danish Arts Foundation, the Fake Foundation, and 1. Majfonden, but we got a rather surprising rejection from the New Carlsberg Foundation, which might be explained by the artists’ short CVs and lack of experience. Obviously, it’s difficult to speculate about political motivations, but it is striking that a foundation that is usually quite willing to take risks with its grants said no to this project. At the same time, this setback contributed to our sense of urgency and necessity, of “this is something we simply have to do.” We want to insist that the situation in Gaza must be talked about, and art is a way to create a platform for that conversation.
In their manifesto, the organisers emphasise that the Gaza Biennale is an art project, not activism. That distinction is presumably difficult to uphold. What deliberations have you made on that score?
SL: In our initial meetings with them, they were very clear about that position. Of course, this is about giving voice to Palestinian perspectives, and about how one can create art during a genocide. But the framework is absolutely clear: this is about art and exhibition-making on the same footing as any other project. Art is art and should be presented as such. It’s about striking a balance. Should we mention the word genocide? Everyone ought to be able to see that this is what’s happening, and it’s a term we use in our everyday lives, but in terms of the Biennale, we have also had to ponder the question: where should this exhibition position itself?
Just like our colleagues at the Gaza Biennale, we don’t speak about this project as activism. If the Gaza Biennale is perceived as “too activist,” it may well deter certain people from seeing the exhibition. Of course, our hope is that as many people as possible will come to gain a different perspective on the extreme urgency of the situation and, quite simply, to see the art. To talk about the Palestinian people and their brutally suppressed existence.
Do your own curatorial principles and practices take a back seat when the organisers’ starting point is so markedly different from yours?
KLS: For us, it’s primarily a matter of supporting the Biennale’s choices and ambitions. They’ve chosen a specific register and narrative for the project, and we owe them the respect of adopting it. The context they’re working in is completely different from the one we’re in. So the work we’re doing in Copenhagen – no matter what we call it – will probably always be labelled as activist work. To insist on Palestinian representation is, apparently, activism. Of course, the Gaza Biennale is about survival in the midst of a genocide, and the fact that the organisers themselves don’t use the umbrella term “activism” is probably because they are actually living within all the destruction.
Is this project also about showing the art while it still exists, while the people and the artists still exist?
SL: The organisers behind the Gaza Biennale have a very poignant phrasing about art as concrete testament to struggle and to a people’s existence, and that is probably what we are trying to hold onto by launching a Danish pavilion. Quite literally, Palestinian cultural heritage is being destroyed before the eyes of the entire world, and the blockade makes it impossible for people and materials to move in and out of Gaza. We are activating an exhibition model that mobilises a global collective of artists and art workers in order to preserve this testimony to the Palestinian people, and we do so at a time when the global collective of power holders refuses to recognise their right to exist.
