{"id":25919,"date":"2011-09-26T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-09-26T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/?p=25919"},"modified":"2017-05-11T11:15:08","modified_gmt":"2017-05-11T10:15:08","slug":"a-singular-voice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/?p=25919","title":{"rendered":"A singular voice: Anish Kapoor on why artists have a duty to stand for freedom of expression"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"sculptor\u00a0Anish<\/a>Earlier this year, the arrest and detention of Ai Weiwei, China’s most famous artist and Index contributor, caused an international outcry. In an exclusive interview with Index, celebrated sculptor\u00a0Anish Kapoor explains why artists have a duty to take a stand for freedom of expression<\/strong><\/p>\n

Index: <\/em><\/strong>When you made the decision to withdraw from the show in Beijing and to make a stand for Ai Weiwei, had you ever made that kind of political gesture before?<\/p>\n

Anish Kapoor: <\/em><\/strong>When Ai Weiwei was arrested, I was doing this work in Paris at the Grand Palais [\u2018Leviathan\u2019, pictured below]. I thought about it long and hard \u2013– should I, shouldn\u2019t I dedicate the work to Ai Weiwei? What does it mean? One has to be very clear that in doing such a thing you never do it without a degree of self-interest. I needed to understand what my self-interest was and what I was trying to do. Was this about Ai Weiwei or was it about me? And I decided in the end that as one of the big shows in Europe during the summer, I could dedicate it to Ai Weiwei and that it wasn\u2019t about me. I discovered in doing it that actually I have a voice that I probably didn\u2019t know I had before and I think that\u2019s very important. And then I felt that since I\u2019d already taken a stand, the show that the British Council was planning<\/a> [“UK Now” in China next year] required a further stand. I think it\u2019s essential that while there are still a hundred and more people locked up in Chinese jails — I\u2019m talking about intellectuals, I\u2019m not for the moment talking about ordinary people who go on the internet — I think it\u2019s the duty of all artists to stand up and say we won\u2019t take part. I\u2019ve called out to artists all over — don\u2019t take part, don\u2019t show in China. A few have started to respond. I see that Daniel Buren, the great French conceptual artist, has pulled a show in China, and there are others. I\u2019m glad to see it. It means something.<\/p>\n

Index: <\/em><\/strong>You also proposed that galleries close for a day across the world and said it would be good for the art world to come together more.<\/p>\n

Anish Kapoor: <\/em><\/strong>It\u2019s perhaps na\u00efve of me, but I think it\u2019s important that we stand together for colleagues. It\u2019s very hard for galleries to close for a day, but rather than a negative action, I feel in the end we were about to make a positive action on the anniversary of the 100 days of Ai Weiwei\u2019s incarceration<\/a>, but thankfully he was released. The positive action was to try and get thousands of galleries all over the world to show a work of Ai Weiwei\u2019s.
\n\"Ai<\/a><\/p>\n

Artists under threat<\/strong><\/p>\n

Index: <\/em><\/strong>China is an extreme case in the degree to which it controls, and attempts to control, freedom of expression. Would you like to see the art world being more politically engaged and showing more solidarity? There\u2019s a very long tradition of writers coming together, but not in the art world.<\/p>\n

Anish Kapoor: <\/em><\/strong>The art world is extremely fragmented. It is a place that\u2019s also infiltrated by money and other instruments of influence. And it never finds itself in a place where it can shout. I think we need to learn how to do that and find a way to have singular voices. Through the whole period of Soviet repression of artists, which was severe, the art world didn\u2019t say a thing. The avant-garde has held itself away from human rights. It\u2019s been a great struggle for artists of non-European origin. It\u2019s been a great struggle for women artists, quite contrary to the sense that the aesthetic world is an open forum \u2013– it isn\u2019t. It\u2019s extremely doctrinaire and extremely partisan. And I think those battles are still being fought. So it\u2019s not surprising at one level anyway.<\/p>\n

I can only explain it by [the fact that] these old instruments of power in the art world are generally male and white, and within a certain aesthetic tradition. All of that has begun to fall apart in the last decade or so. We still haven\u2019t got to the point where, if you like, lone, outsider voices can be properly heard. Ai Weiwei is a celebrity, so it\u2019s relatively easy [for him to be heard] \u2013– much harder in many other cases.<\/p>\n

Index: <\/em><\/strong>Artists are more subject to arbitrary censorship wherever they are \u2013– whether in the free world or more repressive world.<\/p>\n

Anish Kapoor: <\/em><\/strong>I think it\u2019s also because contemporary visual culture isn\u2019t uni-directional. \"\"<\/a>When you write a piece, you have to articulate a precise point in words \u2013 political or otherwise. An art work can be nebulous in relation to the politics of its situation. It can indicate a discomfort without actually articulating it and therefore it\u2019s much harder to pin down. It\u2019s much harder to say: \u2018This is subversive.\u2019 It\u2019s hard to define what subversive is \u2013– especially in contemporary language and contemporary visual culture. Ai Weiwei, in that sense, is somewhat more articulated towards a series of events — noting down the number of people killed by corruption and maladministration, or collecting and making monuments with marbled doors of all the houses that have been knocked down and land that\u2019s been taken away from the so-called squatters. It\u2019s still nebulous though. If you look at the work it\u2019s just a bunch of marbled doors. It doesn\u2019t obviously say what we infer from it. Though we know what to infer of course.<\/p>\n

Index: <\/em><\/strong>I\u2019m also thinking of artists in the West. There\u2019s a famous case of the Smithsonian last year <\/a>bowing to conservative pressure. There\u2019s galleries in London that have problems when they show the work of Sally Mann<\/a> for example.<\/p>\n

Anish Kapoor: <\/em><\/strong>I think we have a very carefully defined sense of what\u2019s acceptable, especially if it goes near children or pornography — all those much more difficult areas. Censorship is there and some of it is okay, I assume. But how we monitor it is important.<\/p>\n

Index: <\/em><\/strong>When you say it\u2019s ok \u2026<\/p>\n

Anish Kapoor: <\/em><\/strong>I can see that there\u2019s a reason to monitor pornography and paedophilia, especially unacceptable things, and we have to understand that anything that encourages them has to be watched carefully. I understand that impulse but we go there, even there, with great care.<\/p>\n

Index: <\/em><\/strong>Artists are by the very nature of their work going to be more vulnerable to pressures of conservatism or conformism.<\/p>\n

Anish Kapoor: <\/em><\/strong>Of course. There\u2019s a kind of naughty boy or naughty girl way of doing it which a lot of artists have taken — why not? I\u2019m not that kind of artist at all. I feel that agitprop as a method is problematic — for me — in terms of my poetic understanding of what a work can be.<\/p>\n

When it comes to governments, economic interests override human rights<\/strong><\/p>\n

Index: <\/em><\/strong>I wanted to ask you about the British Council\u2019s response to the dilemma of artists displaying work in countries that have a poor human rights record. Chief executive Martin Davidson has said: “It is through cultural exchange that we best demonstrate the benefits of free artistic expression and build supportive links between people in the UK and China.”<\/p>\n

Anish Kapoor: <\/em><\/strong>I say phooey to that I\u2019m afraid. I did suggest to them [that they] ought to make the central piece in the [UK Now] show a kind of dedication to Ai Weiwei — or to one of the other artists. If they\u2019re going to do this show then they ought to have [Chinese] artists properly take part. The governmental view over the past 30 years has been we\u2019ll speak quietly in public and loudly in private. Well, 30 years of doing that hasn\u2019t done a damn thing. We had the premier of China here [in London] and Cameron was silent on the subject. [Was that] just because Ai was released? No, that was carefully timed. And I think silence says that there are economic interests that override human rights interests. It\u2019s disgraceful.<\/p>\n

Index on Censorship: <\/em><\/strong>China\u2019s one of the most flagrant examples [of human rights abuse], Iran would be another. Would you start applying the same [tactics] to other countries?<\/p>\n

Anish Kapoor: <\/em><\/strong>One has to. In the end one has to. Iranian culture, like Chinese culture, is extraordinary. One has to take a moral stand in a way with colleagues for solidarity. I think it\u2019s important to understand in this also that governments are ineffective. I think that\u2019s maybe the most important point of all. Individuals have to do it all. So therefore it\u2019s our duty as individuals to stand up and say we won\u2019t take part or protest. The Chinese don\u2019t listen to anyone while there are government protests<\/a>\u00a0— I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that it\u2019s individuals making a noise all over the world that made them release Ai Weiwei. I\u2019ve no doubt about it. Governments are just ineffective at this. And we have the power. We must do something.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

This article appears in The art issue (Autumn 2011) of Index on Censorship magazine.\u00a0Click on
\nThe Art Issue<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>for subscription options\u00a0and more<\/em><\/p>\n

This issue is nominated for an\u00a0Amnesty Award<\/a><\/em><\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Art Issue:<\/strong> The arrest and detention of Ai Weiwei<\/strong>, China’s most famous artist and Index contributor, caused an international outcry. In an exclusive interview celebrated sculptor\u00a0Anish Kapoor<\/strong> explains why artists must take a stand for free expression<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":27326,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[8890,581,9101],"tags":[3712,3713,102,7364,3849],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25919"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25919"}],"version-history":[{"count":92,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90379,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25919\/revisions\/90379"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}