#1 Wie weiss ist die Kunst?

“Wer wie ich die deutsche Einwanderungsgesellschaft nicht vorrangig als Problem sieht, sondern Migration als – auch kulturelle – Bereicherung begrüßt, der wird als Kulturpolitiker ziemlich schmallippig, wenn er feststellt, wie unterrepräsentiert die migrantische Bevölkerung in unseren Theatern, Opern, Konzerthäusern und Museen vertreten ist”. The prominent German newspaper Die Zeit devoted in May 2012 a very documented article, entitled “Wie weiss ist die Kunst?”, to the place taken by artists mit Migrationshintergrund in the German cultural and artistic sphere. The name of the article can as such resume the actual situation concerning this topic: by asking “How white are arts?”, this article raises the issue of the representation of non-white artists in the cultural sphere. When looking for more information and more articles about this topic, the German web offers a lot of results - as if this subject was, since a few years or even months, a new societal topic. It is interesting to compare the situation with France, where this subject of the representation of immigration in the arts is a new trend, surrounded by the recent Arab Spring.

            
Issues related to immigration are not only to be understood through political, economical or social fields. In order to comprehend how a country does manage to integrate and to interact with an immigrant community, culture and arts are very good indicators. The large amount of recent articles in prominent French and German newspapers is moreover very telling of the actual consciousness regarding this issue.

            In this first blog entry, we will discuss the evolution of the participation of artists mit Migrationshintergrund to arts, culture and theater in Germany and in France. We will try to figure out how media and main figures of these spheres perceive the rise of the representation of immigration in the very traditional European cultural world. However, we will see that there is still a long way to go in order to make these minorities get the same chances to express themselves in a (still) white-majority cultural scene. In conclusion, could arts and culture be new ways for immigrant population to insert themselves into the German and French societies?

Deutschland - „Bist du Schwul oder Türke?“

"Apocalypse", Sükran Moral, 2009

"New Baghdad Museum", Irfan Önürmen, 2007

  This is the title of the last play created by Shermin Langhoff, a Turkish-German stage director who will manage the very prominent Maxim Gorki Theater of Berlin from January 2013. For her, this play was a way “to claim and to provoke, to break taboos of the Turkish society”.  She describes her theater as „ein Theater von und für Menschen, die nicht selber migriert sind, aber in diesem Kontext leben“. She then does not want to deal with archetypical images from immigration, but just wants to traduce how this phenomenon does impact our society. In one word, this stage director mit Migrationshintergrund does not create plays only for Turkish people, but for the contemporary German society in its entirety – at least, for the part of the German society that is interested by the topic and the issues related to the immigration. For Langhoff, this very idea of creating theater plays about immigration that could be listened to and understood by the whole society is a utopia: “Eine Utopie, die nicht mehr, wie so lange, zuerst von der Politik propagiert werden darf, sondern in den Theatern der Republik erprobt werden soll”. We see here how arts can be used as basis to raise political and social issues.

The exhibition Istanbul Next Wave that has been hold in Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin in 2009 is also very telling about the relationships between people mit Migrationshintergrund and arts in Germany. The exhibition presented the works of more than 80 artists. No traces of demagogy or of politically correct elements in this exhibition, but just one goal: provoking and criticizing the modern Turkish society. In the picture above, we can see for example an installation from a woman entitled Apocalypse, dealing with life and death, femininity and religion, in a very controversial way. Other female artists took part to this exhibition: „Die Künstlerinnen stellen ihrer Gesellschaft keinesfalls ein beschönigendes Prädikat aus. Patriarchalisch, sexistisch, konsumfetischistisch“, mentions the newspaper Die Welt in the article Türkische Kunst, patrialistisch und sexistich devoted to the exhibition.

To conclude this first part about participation of people mit Migrationshintergrund to the arts and culture scene in Germany, we’ve seen through these two examples that Turkish artists are claiming changes in the society in different ways. Indeed, the first theater director that we mentioned was aiming to make immigration better understood in the German society, whereas the artists of the exhibition Istanbul Next Wave are before all trying to make Turkey evolve by expressing themselves through arts in Germany. But in any case, this art is created and produced by people mit Migrationshintergrund themselves and not by elitist institutions, in the contrary of what can be analyzed in France.

France – A new Arab wave in French museums

"Les Femmes du Maroc après le bain", Lalla Essaydi, 2008.

 

“Arab Spring was kind of unexpected for everybody. But we should just have taken a look to the works of artists of this area though, to understand how deep the roots of the riot were”. The French magazine Telerama devoted a long and interesting article to the rise of Arab artists who were exhibiting their works in Paris just after the Arab Spring. Exactly like in Berlin for the Istanbul Next Wave exhibition, these artists use arts to criticize some aspects of their societies. But some of them, however, also “only” use their art … to make art. “The history of modern art has always been only linked to the Occident", says the curator of the new exhibition devoted to Arab artists in the Institut du Monde Arabe (Arab Center for the Arts) in Paris. Indeed, we as European are often led to see arts from immigration as a way for artists to criticize aspect of their societies. However, we have to recognize that they have the right to use art as such, just as Occidental people made in the previous centuries. “These artists have never been considered in Occident. At worst, they have been assessed as dated in the 1960’s, when minimalism and conceptual art were trendy. At best, they were considered as imitators”, explains the curator of the IMA (Institut du Monde Arabe).  The (small) rise of exhibitions of people mit Migrationshuntergrund in France shows that art as such is not reserved to Westerners.

Showing Arab modern art is a premiere in France.  The magazine L’Express devoted a large article to this new “trend”, whose name was very telling: “In 2012, Paris explores Arab cultures”.  This year, huge exhibitions about Arab arts and culture have been hold in the Musee du Louvre and the Centre Georges Pompidou, the biggest museums of Paris. Unlike in Berlin however, these exhibitions are done in a typical French way: in elitist and fancy institutions. Unlike in Berlin, we will not see an Arab stage director showing a play about issues concerning immigration in the near future. We need to run cultural policies that could be able to make these people take entirely part to the creative and cultural wave in the country. Today, even if we see more and more artists in France mit Migrationshintergrund, their works are often reserved to an elite and a particular category of the population.

Paris and Berlin both suffer from a lack of participation of artists mit Migrationshintergrund in the culture and in the arts. Even if their number increased in the very past years, they still do not have the same status that “white artists” in our society. The next articles of this blog will keep analyzing this phenomenon from other points of view, such as economical or political.