Loading ...Lebanese artist’s MoMA work ties IDF to big art money
Taly Krupkin
Haaretz
An interactive wall is at the center of an installation on the first floor of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Twinkling, colorful lights beckon visitors to approach and study the writing, arrows, tables, lists, pictures and names that together form a somewhat cumbersome diagram, above which appear head shots of two men and the captions Moti and Ronen. The installation is part of the latest work by Lebanese artist Walid Raad, 48, called “Scratching on Things I Could Disavow.”
The work — which at first glance looks like the scribbles that might help a TV detective solve a murder — actually traces the connection between a fund supporting hundreds of artists around the world and the Israeli military and high-tech industries.
Raad has held weekly performances in front of the installation in recent months, called “Walkthrough.” Both the performance and the installation are part of a large retrospective of Raad’s work at MoMA. His previous works were about the civil war in Lebanon. During the performance, he tells his U.S. audience and tourists what he discovered after being invited to join the Artist Pension Trust, which recruits 250 artists in the great cultural centers of the world — such as New York, London, Berlin, Mumbai, Beijing and Mexico City.
The trust’s deal with the artists is that they give it one work a year, with which APT can do as it pleases: show it, store it or sell it. If the trust chooses to sell the artwork, it keeps a third of the profit, gives the artist a little over a third, and divides the rest among the other 249 artists in the same city. By doing so, APT ensures that artists have something to live on, even in tough times.
Source: www.haaretz.com