Sydney Biennale Artists Response to Cutting Ties with 'Detention Camps' Sponsor
By Ruth Skilbeck, 9.3.2014
"We
can still not at this moment answer on how we or the other artists that
withdrew will be responding, for we have all taken a moment to observe the
new situation and talk about next steps"- Libia Castro and Olafur
Olafsson, Biennale of Sydney artists.
This the email message sent to me by prominent international
contemporary artist-duo, Libia Castro (Spain) and Olafur Olafsson (Iceland) on
their response yesterday to the announcement that the Biennale of Sydney chairman, Luca
Belgiorno-Nettis, has resigned following international pressure and the boycott
of artists from the Biennale, over the sponsorship ties to mandatory detention
refugee camps funding.
Belgiorno- Nettis is the chairman of Transfield the
construction multinational which manages the Manus Island detention camp which
came under international media scrutiny two weeks ago when a refugee inmate was
murdered and 70 seriously injured when they were attacked within the compound
by guards, local PNG police and service staff, according to the first hand
reports, aired on Australian TV.
Libia Castro and Olafur Olafsson are two of the nine artists who withdrew their
works from the Biennale in protest. I met and spoke with them at an artist talk
they gave last Thursday, and we did a photo shoot, at Sydney College of the
Arts, where they are artists in residence until the end of the month.
In their talk they said that they decided to withdraw, after the
Biennale Board responded to the requests of over 40 artists to sever the ties
with Transfield, when the Biennale Board initially responded with an open letter statement
that ‘without Transfield there would be no Biennale”. Is it the Transfield
sponsor Biennale, they asked, when they had come to Sydney to exhibit their
work in the Sydney public Biennale? When
the sponsor further told them that artists could discuss the issues of refugee
detention, in the Biennale itself, they saw this as a conflict and compromising
artistic autonomy.
 |
| Photo copyright Ruth Skilbeck 2014 Libia Castro and Olafur Olafsson, with a Refugee Art Project representative, and trauma psychologist and a piece of their new art work at Sydney College of the Arts, March 6, 2014. |
The Artwork:
Castro and Olafsson told me they are in the process of making a new work in
collaboration with refugees from the Refugee Art Project and a psychologist specializing
in trauma, and I talked also with them, as they were there to record the voices
of refugees for their new audio-visual and performance-based art work. The
refugees will record their descriptions of images, that they remember and
imagine, associated with their journeys, and these will be made into an art
work which audiences can also participate in, through listening and imagining
and empathizing with the voices.
Without seeing it yet this seems to fit in with the theme of the
Biennale of You Imagine What You Desire. If so, these refugees may be able to
imagine what they desire in a positive way, with the outcome of reaching or
making a new home. Unlike those who have the unimaginably traumatic experience
of finding themselves victims of "horror used as a deterrent" in the
indefinite mandatory camps in Manus Island and Nauru, which have been in the
news over the past few week, which is what prompted the artists to boycott the
Biennale in protest.
In their artist talk, Castro and Olafsson, explained that because of the
focus of their art practice, they felt compelled to take action and withdraw
their work, when they found out about the connection to refugee detention
camps, as they have made works in the past about and with refugees; as well as the
work they are making now to show in Sydney. The artists showed an excerpt from
their video works, including Caregivers,
with an original operatic soundtrack, which they made on the large numbers of
Ukrainian refugees, 6-8,000 per year, who are working as caregivers to ageing
Italians in family homes in North Italy.
Castro and Olafsson also showed and discussed two more of their video
works on relevant themes: Lobbyists,
on the very large number of professional lobbyists at the European Union
parliament in Brussels, with an original reggae soundtrack by an Icelandic
band. This is part of their art practice working with activists.
The third work they discussed was Your Country Doesn't Exist, a
video work set and filmed on a gondola in the Venice canals, a female opera
singer, standing in the gondola sings against the invasion of Iraq, as the boat
passes tourists, and locals, some of whom contribute to the audio, including an
elderly woman's voice telling of the palace her family has lived in for the
past 120 years. She was an intervention, in the actual filming, said Olafur
later. She was watching us filming, she kept making remarks, "what a
beautiful voice he has"... and so we started talking to her and decided to
include her voice. Your Country Doesn't Exist was shown at the Venice
Biennale in 2011.
Libia Castro and Olafur Olafsson’s statement about their art practice,
states that their artistic practice: "concentrates on the phenomena of
transition towards the post-fordist phase of political, social and cultural
development. Exclusion and exploitation appear as one of the main issues of [their]
critique of flexible subjectivities, under pressure of the decline of the
nation-state and the rise of global markets and corporations. The artists work across media and in a variety of genres and
disciplines, "from political history through gender studies and
sociology". Their works are often made "in collaboration with other
artists, professionals, local citizens decision makers, activists and refugees
alike."
In their works they state they: "critique an injured world of non-belonging and denied participation."
Given their art practice, protesting the contexts of biennale art
sponsorship becomes part of their work as artists, as a form of self-critique
and critique of the art world itself. This is part of their work, and is a
relevant addition to the international discourse on the themes of art and
sponsorship in the post-fordist era, and in the new era following the global
financial crises, the "rise of global markets and corporations."
Other prominent international artists showing in Sydney, working with these
themes include Isaac Julien the acclaimed British artist, whose exhibition of
new video works, straight form MOMA in New York will open at the end of the
week at Roslyn Oxley9 gallery in Sydney (not part of the Biennale).
Libia Castro and Olafur Olaffsson were in the group of the
Sydney Biennale artists, followed by art installers and artists who
withdrew in protest at the funding of the Biennale from the profits of
indefinite mandatory detention (imprisonment) refugee camps, run by the
companies owned by the former chairman of the Biennale.
The ex-Chairman and Sponsor:
On Friday, the Biennale Board announced the resignation of Luca
Begiorno-Nettis, chairman of the Biennale and also director of Transfield, the
sponsor that has recently been awarded a 1.2 billion contract to run indefinite
mandatory detention camps on Manus Island, and Nauru which have been roundly
criticized by humanitarian groups, and the UN and led tothe boycott of the
Biennale, by international and local artists, and art workers and
critics.
Belgiorn-Nettis resigned he said after international governments began
to ask questions about why the Biennale Board was not severing its ties
(presumably) given the artists protests, and also the protests of humanitarian
organisations.
Luca Belgiorno-Nettis himself said on Friday
7.3.14, as published in the Guardian:
"Yesterday
I learnt that some international government agencies are beginning to question
the decision of the Biennale’s board to stand by Transfield."
The Government Policy
Despite the international and national criticism, including support from The Greens Party for the boycotting artists, the government announced that Australia is continuing its policies of indefinite mandatory detention.
What will the artists do now, whether they will return to the Biennale
or not, is one question that is being asked and debated amongst the artists who
withdrew.
The situation is not clear, as to the wider context and the actual
funding that remains, and so the artists are taking time to think about their
next steps.
In the constantly evolving context of the 19th Biennale Sydney life and
art are not only imitating each other but directly influencing and shaping the
cultural, and also social change that will emerge from the artists protests,
joining the voices of international humanitarian groups, against the inhumanity
of indefinitely "detaining" (incarcerating) refugees in camps on
prison islands, and also the profits, being used to fund public art events,
such as the Biennale of Sydney.
This is a positive outcome, and a change for the better,
a new awareness, and engagement of the Australia art world with the
international context of ongoing debates about these very issues of art and
corporate sponsorship. And a new form of self-critique and art world critique
that is developing now in Australia. As the international artists in Sydney now
show, this is part of a discussion that is happening internationally.
But meanwhile, artists and
observers are waiting to find out more, and to decide how to act on that.
This is a historic moment in which the relationship between art and
funding sponsorship is being openly challenged and debated in the context of
the art world and the Sydney Biennale. Whatever happens now will be watched
with great interest by the international, and local, art world and will be part
of an important newly significant art world conversation.
Ruth Skilbeck 9.3.2014
Text and Photograph:
Copyright Ruth Skilbeck
