Tasmania’s Dark Mofo festival has canceled one of the key works planned for the event in June and apologized, after a nationwide social media backlash led by Aboriginal artists.
Organizers of the winter festival, which is run by the Museum of Old and New Art, yesterday announced that the work by Spanish artist Santiago Sierra — in which he planned to immerse a Union Flag into the donated blood of Aborigines as a statement “against colonialism” — would no longer go ahead.
“In the end the hurt that will be caused by proceeding isn’t worth it,” festival creative director Leigh Carmichael wrote on Facebook yesterday. “We made a mistake, and take full responsibility. The project will be cancelled.”
Among those criticizing the work was Kimberley Moulton, a senior curator for Museums Victoria and Yorta Yorta woman, who wrote underneath Dark Mofo’s call for Aboriginal blood on Instagram: “This is an insulting and abhorrent curatorial decision. There has been enough First Peoples blood spilt across the world because of the English. This is not ‘decolonising,’ it’s not provocative or groundbreaking conceptual practice — it’s shock jock art.”
Artist Jamie Graham-Blair wrote on Instagram: “Indigenous bodies are not tools to be used by colonisers. We are not props for your white guilt art.”
The artistic director of the museum’s summer festival Mona Foma, Violent Femmes bassist Brian Ritchie, distanced his festival from the commission, saying that he had been advocating against it.
“Exploiting people while claiming to protest on their behalf is intellectually void. Stupid programming is aesthetically null. Controversy outweighing the quality of the work is bad art,” he wrote on Facebook. “Please don’t send any more urine soaked pillows to me, because I have nothing to do with this inanity and disavow it as an individual and on behalf of Team Mona Foma.”
When announcing the commission on Saturday, Carmichael said that the piece was the result of almost two years of work between the artist’s studio and the festival team.
By Monday, Carmichael had issued a statement saying that the festival had been overwhelmed with responses to Sierra’s project, but he appeared to be standing by the artist.
“Self-expression is a fundamental human right, and we support artists to make and present work regardless of their nationality or cultural background,” it said.
However, the sheer volume of protest appeared to have forced Dark Mofo to capitulate.
“We apologise to all First Nations people for any hurt that has been caused,” Carmichael said in a second statement yesterday. “We are sorry.”
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