HURTING IMAGES

Tanya Abraham discusses how accusations of anti-Semitism have overwhelmed documenta 15.

- Tanya Abraham

The sunny summer morning in Kassel has a sullen air.

I recognise the gloom as being from the recent scandal that has rocked the city. There isn't a swarm of visitors either, and the last few days have had a number of performances cancelled. There appears to be a lack of celebration; it is, what one might call, a disheartened atmosphere.

A few days after the exhibition's inauguration on the 18th of June, a work by the Indonesian collective Taring Padi was heavily criticised for being antisemitic. The work had created media headlines in Germany it is an eight-meter-high and twelve-meter-wide painting called People's Justice from 2002 that depicts Suharto's rule from 1967 to 1998 and the power of the Indonesian people's resistance to the dictatorship. My first reaction was to visit the Bauhaus-styled Hallenbad Ost which houses the works of Taring Padi's practice of the last 22 years. However, I found no replica of People's Justice at the venue.

There is, however, a large swimming pool filled with cement to present other works by the collective. People's Justice framed moments of violence and captured acts of protest and retaliation. Installed in a central location in Kassel, the painting showed - warmongering monsters, marching soldiers, grieving people, in a sweeping depiction of strife and conflict. The figures in the painting that incited people to level accusations of anti-Semitism against Ruangrupa, the Indonesian collective that curated this edition of the documenta, included those of a cigar-chomping, fang-baring, bloody-eyed Jew with a SS hat and a pig-headed soldier with 'Mossad' written on his helmet.