Exhibit B

September 25, 2014 8:44 AM

Exhibit B is a performance art piece by white South African Brett Bailey. The piece features black actors in still images depicting scenes of slavery and as asylum seekers in living installations that recall the human zoos (previously) of the 19th and early 20th Centuries. The piece has been highly controversial, it has attracted significant critical acclaim, being described by art critics as unbearable and essential and "hugely powerful, deeply unsettling, but vital viewing".

However, critics of the work have called it racist, and an online petition to close its london performance (having previously been shown in 12 cities) attracted almost 23,000 signatures, arguing that it should "rightly be censored". and have suggested it is " akin to a German organising a piece of “art” featuring Jewish people dressed in prison garb, numbers tattooed on their arms, locked in a contrived concentration camp."

The campaign for censorship/boycott of the London display of the work was successful this week, after 200 protestors blocked access to the entrance of the exhibit and the roads leading to the Barbican cancelling future performances citing safety concerns.

The forced closure has been criticised by anti-censorship campaigners, many of whom have been highly critical of a campaign that they say deprived the public of the opportunity of deciding for oursleves the merits of the work, and have sugested that "We have now become so sensitive, so uninterested in the purpose of a work of art, that we are closing down exhibits intended to support our own politics.".

Speaking to The Guardian newspaper - performers in the exhibit issued statements of support and the artist has also responded there.

Other campaigners have not taken a position on the closure/censorship but instead drawn attention to the failure of the barbican to adequatley engage with the protestors and calling attention to the lack of public arts funding granted to ethnic minority organisations.

posted by Another Fine Product From The Nonsense Factory (21 comments total)

Kehinde Andrews puts it very succinctly in the second Guardian link:

... this exhibition is akin to a German organising a piece of “art” featuring Jewish people dressed in prison garb, numbers tattooed on their arms, locked in a contrived concentration camp.

Such a piece is unimaginable and would be censored without a second thought.

The distress at the heart of this episode is that no one organising this exhibition sees this obvious parallel because of the devaluation of black life, suffering and experiences.

posted by iotic at 8:59 AM on September 25, 2014

If a white artist decides that they want to display black men and women in a public place while wearing chains and collars with minimal representation of the systemic white oppression responsible for those events, then they may well be supporting someone's politics, but they sure as hell aren't supporting mine.

I say this as an artist, as someone who supports freedom of speech and as someone who works in arts funding in the UK. This exhibition should never have gotten past the Barbican's planning stages.
posted by fight or flight at 8:59 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Pure appropriation in which the anonymous black actors get used for yet another white dude to gain fame doing something that pretends to be socially conscious and anti-racist but helps perpetuate the idea that black people are objects to be looked over and pawed at and is delightfully controversial so all the middle aged arts critics can have a frisson of thoughtcrime.

No redeeming value whatsoever.

(I feel the same way about any non-survivor writing about the Holocaust. Not your story to tell.)
posted by MartinWisse at 9:30 AM on September 25, 2014

(I feel the same way about any non-survivor writing about the Holocaust. Not your story to tell.)

What? Really?
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 9:45 AM on September 25, 2014 [4 favorites]

Sorry, got distracted: came in to say thank you for this FPP, it's a thoughtful and well-constructed art controversy post.
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 9:47 AM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

I would recommend reading the link in which the black performers in the piece speak powerfully about their own sense of agency in creating and performing the work and their feeling that the work has a powerful and important message to convey. I think it's a bit glib--and demeaning--to insist that these performers are simply "objects" being manipulated by the artist.
posted by yoink at 9:47 AM on September 25, 2014 [8 favorites]

I'd feel better about glowing testimonies about the artwork, if they didn't come from people who are employed by the artist in question.
posted by iotic at 10:29 AM on September 25, 2014

The actors who made statements in the article I linked to were performers in the Edinburgh production, not the London production so as I understand it were no longer employed by the artist at the time of their statements.
posted by Another Fine Product From The Nonsense Factory at 10:38 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

it's still the paid equivalent of "I've got a black friend who says it's okay" though.
posted by MartinWisse at 10:47 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Hey I have a fun idea for investigating racism in art. Let's do a show where we put the white people in chains and only let black people in to view! Let's try that one.
posted by dame at 10:49 AM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'd feel better about glowing testimonies about the artwork, if they didn't come from people who are employed by the artist in question.

A: they're not anymore.

B: so either they're "objects" who are entirely incapable of independent thought about their participation in this project or they're craven hypocrites who will adopt any position you please so long as there might be a buck in it for them?

it's still the paid equivalent of "I've got a black friend who says it's okay" though.

Or, you know, they're people who were integrally involved in staging the work who have thought deeply about its significance. One or the other--it's hard to tell.
posted by yoink at 11:15 AM on September 25, 2014 [8 favorites]

iotic: I'd feel better about glowing testimonies about the artwork, if they didn't come from people who are employed by the artist in question.

So you're attacking the work because it was made by a white man, but when it's pointed out that black people did help make the work, with agency, you dismiss their opinions as being financially motivated?

Hypothetically, what would be your objection if an African-American civil activist not affiliated with the piece liked it?
posted by IAmBroom at 11:42 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

There's some really good stuff in that statement:

We find this piece to be a powerful tool in the fight against racism. Individually, we chose to do this piece because art impacts people on a deeper emotional level that can spark change.

The exhibit does not allow for any member of the audience, white, black or otherwise, to disassociate themselves from a system that contains racism within it. As a white South African, despite not having the lived experience of black people, Brett Bailey recognises that he is not outside of the system that allows for racism to exist.

posted by corb at 11:53 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

I didn't say their statements were financially motivated. Rather I imagine in order to be part of such an exhibit, as a black person, it would help to believe in it. That would tend to make their views less objective.

I would rather we focus on the comparison between this and a hypothetical situation in which a German artist hired Jewish actors to silently reenact being on the receiving end of Nazi brutality. Does anyone think that would be acceptable, or be allowed to fly for one second in a major gallery? If not, what's the difference?
posted by iotic at 12:11 PM on September 25, 2014

From the Politics.co.uk commentary:

It is perfectly obvious the Barbican would never put on a racist event. It would be almost impossible to smuggle a racist piece of theatre, TV or visual art into modern Britain.

Really, now.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 12:12 PM on September 25, 2014

I imagine in order to be part of such an exhibit, as a black person, it would help to believe in it. That would tend to make their views less objective.

So if they believe in the piece, their views aren't "objective"?

I would rather we focus on the comparison between this and a hypothetical situation in which a German artist hired Jewish actors to silently reenact being on the receiving end of Nazi brutality. Does anyone think that would be acceptable,

Jew here. Answer: Sure!
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard at 12:34 PM on September 25, 2014 [3 favorites]

Hi, I'm also Jewish.

The question is not whether you or I would accept it, but whether society and its present day groups and power structures would accept it. Do you really think the answer is yes?
posted by iotic at 12:45 PM on September 25, 2014 [3 favorites]

From a review of Exhibit B when it was in Edinburgh by Selina Thompson.

But the longer I walk around the Exhibit, the less ‘affected’ I am by it, and the more irritated and angered I am. What is this piece FOR? Seeing black people, seeing African people – presented as bodies, rather than people: this is nothing new. Seeing those Black Bodies suffering, presented in unbearable pain and terror, this is NOTHING NEW. Black women as sex objects waiting to be raped, as anatomical specimens to be examined, as Mammys, as animals, seeing black men disembodied or presented as violent and frightening, in cages, with their bodies maimed, or without bodies at all, as four disembodied heads sing at the bottom of the exhibition – a mournful lament, of course, so that the whole space reeks of pity and shame and grief – Seeing black history presented as though it began and will end with Colonialism – i.e. when white people come into the picture, is NOTHING NEW. It is not radical, it does not challenge me – actually, it doesn’t challenge anyone really, because it feeds into a cultural narrative that is all too common. One in which pain and persecution is the only way in which we can understand the experience of blackness, one in which we fetishize the black experience as abject, and I am so done. So done.

posted by fight or flight at 1:04 PM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

iotic: The question is not whether you or I would accept it, but whether society and its present day groups and power structures would accept it. Do you really think the answer is yes?

Wouldn't it be easier just to put some wheels on those goalposts?
posted by IAmBroom at 10:34 AM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

Another view From Bonnie Greer. She makes a lot of good points, and I would agree with her that The Barbican handled it badly.
posted by iotic at 1:07 PM on September 27, 2014

IAmBroom no goalposts were moved, if you read my original comment that was my meaning - that it would be unacceptable at a structural, or societal level. I'd rather engage with you if you showed more of an interest in discussing what is a complex subject with some intelligence and nuance, rather than just going for snarky point scoring.
posted by iotic at 1:13 PM on September 27, 2014