Along with my ticket, I picked up a copy of the local tabloid, 20 Minuten , before I boarded the tram to Messeplatz, the Art Basel venue. I froze when I read the headline, ‘Nine African-Americans shot dead in Charleston church’. As I took in the news, I heard others discussing the latest racist attack in the U.S. Everybody was horrified.
It was no coincidence that the voices on the tram found an echo within the walls of the cavernous fair — notably, in Tony Lewis’s chilling light installation (in the ‘Unlimited’ section) which read: “Never argue with police officers, and address them as ‘officer’”; Adam Pendleton’s striking silk screen on canvas, ‘Black Lives Matter’, at Pace gallery; Melvin Edwards’ abstract sculptural series ‘Lynch Fragments’ in Stephen Friedman gallery; Carrie Mae Weems’ stunningly beautiful photographic works at Jack Shainman gallery; and in Kara Walker’s striking sculpture and painting ensemble at Sikkema Jenkins gallery.
Not to speak of the spectacular glass installation of 16 vitrines titled ‘Arab Spring’ by French-Algerian artist Kader Attia — which, in a startling performance at the opening, the artist smashed by pelting stones at it. It was a reference to the pillaging of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo in 2011.
Racial and social tensions, religious warfare, re-colonisation, and cultural destruction are a reality that cannot be ignored, “not by artists and not by society”, to quote Gabrielle Giattino of NY’s Bureau gallery and Sunita Kumar Emmart of India’s Ske gallery, who selected the 16 ‘Statements’ by emerging artists at the fair. “And, far from ignoring it, more and more artists are opting to bring this reality to centre-stage,” noted Cecilia Becanovic of Marcelle Alix, the Paris gallery that presented Baloise Art Prize winner Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc. His work revolves around Victor Schoelcher, the French MP who first pushed for the abolition of slavery laws.
“Centre-stage is Art Basel. From here, you can look around the world,” said Jack Shainman, a top NY gallerist. His gallery made a strong curatorial choice in presenting a solo show of Carrie Mae Weems’ work, which deals with slavery, the Black American experience and women’s place in society. Her ‘Kitchen Series’ sold in a flash to an American museum. “What is happening in the U.S. is awful, our gun laws are terrible,” Shainman pointed out, “and it’s natural that our artists are talking directly to this moment in history. It’s important.”
Equally important, viewers are responding seriously. While most collectors went about investing big-time in conventional pieces ($6 million for a Jean Dubuffet painting, $5.5 million for a Christopher Wool enamel-on-linen painting, $5 million for a Thomas Schütte sculpture, $1 million for a Murakami), masses of art aficionados invested time in studying and re-visiting provocative, socially engaged projects.
I went back thrice to look at Weems and Walker and recognised two faces from a previous halt, for instance. The Iranian couple and I even had the same favourite: A piece by Weems titled “I Looked and Looked but Failed to See What So Terrified You”; a twin-set of identical photographs of a statuesque African-American woman gazing intently at her face in a mirror while elegantly patting her hair. We were all equally drawn to Kara Walker’s endearing sculpture of an ‘African Boy Attendant Curio with Molasses and Brown Sugar’ and to her painting, which included her trademark cut-paper silhouettes — cartoonish in style: a reference to unfading racial and gender stereotypes —etched with racial, sexual and historical tension, and delivering a verdict on oppression.
“Kara’s work drew much admiration and sold quickly, so obviously it resonated,” said Michael Jenkins, co-owner of the Sikkema Jenkins gallery (NY). Bought by a European collector, her work fetched $145,000. “It deserved twice that price, but there’s only that much that we can push for. There’s still a gender bias in operation in the art market,” Jenkins added ruefully. Walker was not around, however, to react to that.
As punchy and crowd-pulling was 31-year-old, Virginia-born Adam Pendleton’s work with the famous protest slogan, ‘Black Lives Matter’, emblazoned across a silk screen. The words, as Pendleton wrote in an essay, were both “a public warning, a rallying cry, and a poetic plea”. The work was sold within hours, according to Nicolas Smirnoff of Pace gallery. People clearly bought into the young African-American’s passion in showing that although racial equality is enshrined in the American constitution and recognised by the people, it is not practised by many.
Politically charged works are still a challenge for collectors; nonetheless the art market is going to see a lot more such work in the days ahead, according to Chris Dercon, director of Tate Modern. He and curators such as Moataz Nasr of Darb1718 Contemporary Art and Culture Centre in Cairo, Ovul Durmusoglu of Istanbul, and British-Syrian Khaled Jalanbo of the Jalanbo Collection in NY are convinced that, with political control being the order of the day in certain places, alternative methods of art production and exhibition will come up — which will in turn see the growth of many little markets within the Art Market.
“Look at what we are doing to keep art alive and kicking in Egypt,” said Moataz Nasr. “We have no galleries anymore, really. We have no finances. But we have our streets, our walls, and our balconies. And that’s where we’ve taken our art.” His colleague Aleya Hamza, who runs the Gypsum Gallery in Cairo, chipped in with a story about the Nile Sunset Annexe, where members pool in money and host a monthly art show in a private apartment.
Ovül Durmusoglu had a similar tale: “Twenty Istanbul-based collectors have pooled in their resources to support contemporary art in the country. Turkey is in economic crisis, so they are looking at options such as crowdfunding.” Both she and Jalanbo believe crowdfunding is the future in places plagued by political unrest and financial scarcity. “It might well be the solution for artists of the Syrian diaspora in Stockholm, Dubai, Berlin and Beirut (now the hub of Syrian contemporary art),” affirmed Jalanbo. “Along with support from fellow-artists, curators and collectors working behind the scenes to sustain the art scene in unstable foreign regions, it might just see them through.”
In the end, “art is doing what religion has failed to do: forging a sense of solidarity and bringing people together,” as Bonaventura Ndikung, director of Savvy Contemporary in Berlin, says eloquently.
