Art and New Authoritarianism

U–jazdowski / Program / Debates / Culture Tensions / Art and New Authoritarianism

11/05/2023

discussion panel

featuring Ignacy Czwartos, Kaya Szulczewska and Taravat Talepas

In the past, contemporary art tended to rebel or oppose orthodoxy. In Poland, artists sought alternative means to exhibit work in reaction to official state aesthetics of communist socialist realism. In the West, abstract expressionism, pop art, performance art, conceptual art, and new media art all played an important role in rejecting the mainstream art of their era.
- However, it seems that, what were once radical moments of artistic rebellion, now appears as a rise of a new authoritarianism and orthodoxy that – ironically – were born from those liberating creative forces.
In 2018, Turner Prize winner Tai Shani created a large scale, sculptural, immersive performance installation titled Semiramis. The work rejected the material reality of the “female woman.” Instead, it posited an alternative speculation, in which our common understanding of “woman” and “feminism undergo” “rapid political shifts in regards to gender, race and class”. In other words, Shani forcefully objected to the term “female” and the definition of woman as an adult human female, preferring the nonsensical “womxn”, a term that allows for the inclusion of non-binary and trans people. This ongoing expansion of the definition of woman is part of the new authoritarianism in contemporary art. Many are quick to publicly shame and encourage the censoring of predominantly female artists who do not agree with the new orthodoxy – for example, the writer Jo Bartosch and visual artist Rachel Ara, who have both written about Shani (who also teaches at the Royal College of Art in London.)
- The ideological merger between corporate capitalism, the media, educational and cultural institutions, social justice programmes, identity politics, and post-modern art has created a new authoritarianism. It is, unlike its political predecessor – communism – more difficult to define. While slippery, but these alignments really exist and are evident in our everyday interactions in the West. Popular in the West, the term “woke” describes the current moment, as a time when, as it seems, unholy marriage between i.e, Islamism and Intersectional politics become credible and viable, claims the writer and journalist Asra Nomani explains in her book Woke Army: The Red-Green Alliance That is Destroying America’s Freedom (2023). Accusations of transphobia and Islamophobia become a tactic aimed at silencing criticism, dissent, and oppositional voices. In the US, artworks by our guest speaker, the Iranian-American artist Taravat Talepasand were censored following complaints by students who said that her work caused them “deep pain.” Talepasand’s art criticised Islamism, particularly its oppressive and deadly subjugation of women. As the journalist Brendan O’ Neill wrote, “the woke West is doing the ayatolloh’s dirty work”.
In the UK, Arts Council England employee Denise Fahmy is taking this public funding body to an employment tribunal. She claims she endured ongoing harassment because of her gender-critical views. Fahmy emphasises that there is bias at ACE’s highest executive level and quotes colleagues circulating a petition against her – some apparently claimed that “gender critical people like me….parasites, neo Nazis, needing to be stamped out…” Such accusations create a culture of fear in the arts, people become too afraid to speak out.
- In the arts, patriotism and nationalism are regarded as dirty words. The renowned and once successful British artists Gilbert & George have taken to opening their own gallery costing them £11 million pounds (ca 55 million PLN) because they have become side-lined by the arts establishment.
In Poland, neo-liberal globalists criticise some curators and artists for focusing too much on Polish culture and history. But what is wrong with art that has a national interest? Artist and guest-speaker Ignacy Czwartos turns to the post-war period for heroic symbols that opposed soviet authoritarianism in Poland. His current show in Warsaw, with a title appropriated from a recent social media slur against the artist which accused him of reverentially kneeling down to patriotic heroes who fought against the communist rule, Czwartos’s re-awakens the spirit of the “Cursed Soldiers” who comprised “nearly 200,000 conspirators – 20,000 actual partisans supported by a huge network of civilians who risked their lives, as they had during the war”, an anti-Soviet underground who bravely fought against their brutal authoritarianism which, not unlike “woke” authoritarianism, was based on the notions of Marxist “liberationist” ideology.
Cancel culture, as it is understood today, echoes the chilling censorship and public shaming of dissidents during communist rule. Our third guest speaker Kaya Szulczewska ,will talk about her own experience and what is currently going on in Poland.
- Our discussion will explore the rise of a new authoritarianism within the arts and give voice to alternative thoughts counterpointing this growing trend. What can we learn from the past? Are there seeds of new artistic movements growing against the overwhelming elitism of neo-liberal and leftist “woke” art conformity?
Join us in the conversation!
Curators of Culture Tensions
- Manick Govinda
- Agnieszka Kolek