Exhibit B - Art for Art Sake or Callous Racism?

[purejam]

Described by Peter Brook as ‘an extraordinary achievement’, this haunting installation sets out to subvert a disturbing phenomenon, turning the notion of exotic spectacle on its head.

Exhibit B critiques the ‘human zoos’ and ethnographic displays that showed Africans as objects of scientific curiosity through the 19th and early 20th centuries. Translated here into twelve tableaux, each features motionless performers placed in settings drawn from real life. Collectively they confront colonial atrocities committed in Africa, European notions of racial supremacy and the plight of immigrants today.

As spectators walk past the exhibits one-by-one, to the sound of lamentations sung live by a Namibian choir, a human gaze is unexpectedly returned.

http://www.barbican.org.uk/theatre/event-detail.asp?ID=16226

Edinburgh festival 2014 review: Exhibit B – facing the appalling reality of Europe's colonial past

This installation uses live models to revisit tales of the torture and murder of African workers and slaves, reminding us that our 21st-century ways of seeing history are still strongly skewed.

Review rating: 5 out of 5

Lyn Gardner

The Guardian, Monday 11 August 2014

Third World Bunfight's live installation, which uses the 19th-century freakshow or human zoo as the inspiration for an investigation into European colonial history, is both unbearable and essential. It's unbearable because of the suffering it depicts: the brief story of a Kenyan man castrated during the Mau Mau uprisings in the 1950s is set among the bone china of a genteel English afternoon tea; appalling tales of the torture and murder of African slaves and workers in Dutch colonies rises out of a Netherlands golden-age painting.

It's essential because the silent, unmoving figures at the centre of each one of the installations makes us confront how we look, where we look and what we are prepared to see. Sarah Baartman, the so-called "Hottentot Venus", who was exhibited in theatres and halls during her life and dissected and then displayed after death, stands expressionless on a turning plinth. Black asylum-seekers are presented as "found objects", although they stand before us living and breathing. It is hard to meet their eye. Again and again, as you wander through the installation and the heartbreaking sounds of traditional Namibian lamentations rise from the mouths of apparently severed heads in Dr Fischer's Cabinet of Curiosities, you long to look away. Maybe even run away. But you can't run away from your collective past.

Creator Brett Bailey has been fearlessly uncompromising in his approach. The experience in the exhibition hall is entirely without comfort. Confronting us with the appalling realities of Europe's colonial past – the stuff I definitely wasn't taught at school – isn't just some kind of guilt trip. It reminds us that most history is hidden from view; it reminds that Britain's 21st-century ways of seeing are still strongly skewed by 18th-, 19th- and 20th-century colonial attitudes. The masterstroke comes at the end: the pictures and the biographies of the ordinary black Edinburgh men and women who are taking part. Tomorrow, history will look a little different.

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/aug/12/exhibit-b-edinburgh-festival-2014-review

[Gen]

it was eventually cancelled.


A spokesperson for the Barbican said:

“Last night as Exhibit B was opening at the Vaults it became impossible for us to continue with the show because of the extreme nature of the protest and the serious threat to the safety of performers, audiences and staff. Given that protests are scheduled for future performances of Exhibit B we have had no choice but to cancel all performances of the piece.

“We find it profoundly troubling that such methods have been used to silence artists and performers and that audiences have been denied the opportunity to see this important work. Exhibit B raises, in a serious and responsible manner, issues about racism; it has previously been shown in 12 cities, involved 150 performers and been seen by around 25,000 people with the responses from participants, audiences and critics alike being overwhelmingly positive.

“The Barbican has done everything we can to ensure London performances can go ahead – including continued dialogue with protestors and senior Barbican staff meeting with the leaders of the campaign and attending a public meeting to discuss the issues raised by the work. We respect people's right to protest but are disappointed that this was not done in a peaceful way as had been previously promised by campaigners .

“We believe this piece should be shown in London and are disturbed at the potential implications this silencing of artists and performers has for freedom of expression.”

[purejam]

Protest Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/boycotthumanzoo

Protest video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZV-6t8j16o

The exhibition was supposed to remind and guilt Caucasians about past colonial atrocities and the way the African body was made a spectacle to be looked down on.

The protesters complained that this was insensitive, insulting, offensive and racist.

The 12 African-descent performers, all came out and said they benefited individually and that the show has a positive social benefit.

Though on the one hand, I'd have wanted the opportunity to view it so I could decide for myself, I don't think I'd have summoned the interest to go.

The liberal side of me feels that art shouldn't be censored. The activist side of me wonders how an establishment art organisation would respond to an installation depicting Jews facing Nazi cruelties.

Overall, I see this as another sign of weakness. We lack organised and influential socioeconomic power and cultural institutions. If we had power and influence, such an exhibition would not have been funded. After all, Western governments do not fund major art exhibitions representing the evils of regimes in Saudi Arabia or China because they are dependent on the former for oil and do not want to antagonise the other.

Any thoughts?

[kia027]

I see the value of the exhibit for art's sake. I see the work done by Brett Bailey (per google) and ThirdWorldBunfight yet I feel once again caucasians are benefitting from the oppression of african peoples. I would prefer if the proceeds were directly benefitting african peoples

[Gen]

I am the Mother of a teen artist and though I have seen some questionable exhibits from artists over the years (from afar), I would never tell her that what she has created is ______.

[blugiant]

I see the value of the exhibit for art's sake. I see the work done by Brett Bailey (per google) and ThirdWorldBunfight yet I feel once again caucasians are benefitting from the oppression of african peoples. I would prefer if the proceeds were directly benefitting african peoples

diss topixx remind mii aff bnd pitcha aff jamaican yuths dat affended manee pon yah ann y mii defended itt.

kia oyinbo ann sum sellouts benefit fram da appression aff blakks

[Blackstar*]

Personally, I'd find it more interesting to subvert the exhibition with Europeans in cages and African visitors, similar to the Diesel ad campaign of a few years ago. See picture.

[purejam]

Personally, I'd find it more interesting to subvert the exhibition with Europeans in cages and African visitors, similar to the Diesel ad campaign of a few years ago. See picture.

Precisely.