S-21 is the name of a former high school in Phnom Penh that Pol Pot turned into a secret torture center and extermination camp. Between 1975 and 1979, 14,200 people were executed there.<\/p>\n
For the sake of the regime\u2019s bureaucracy, every man, woman, and child was photographed just before entering the center where they were brutally murdered. To complete this task, a 15-year-old member of the Khmer Rouge, Nhem Ein, was sent to Shanghai to learn photography, and, a year later, was promoted to the rank of \u201cphotographer-in-chief.\u201d<\/p>\n
In response to exhibitions of these mug shots exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and Arles Photography Festival, Thierry de Duve published \u201cArt in the Face of Radical Evil\u201d in October magazine in 2008. He was shaken by how images of genocide victims \u2014 originally produced for bureaucratic and violent purposes \u2014 were given \u201cartistic\u201d status by entering museums and their collections.\u00a0<\/p>\n
His central inquiry was whether \u201cgenocidal images\u201d could or should be recognized as art. Two decades later, the dilemma he proposed has inverted.<\/p>\n
Since 1955, Documenta, widely regarded as one of the art world\u2019s most formidable events, has been held every five years in Kassel, Germany. The announcement<\/a> of the artistic team of the next edition was widely praised: For the first time, the curators would be an all-female, POC team.<\/p>\n But for those of us who lived through the witchhunts that were unleashed during and after Documenta 15 \u2014 accusations of antisemitism, death threats, cancellations, criminalization \u2014 or for anyone on the wrong side of Germany\u2019s art world, the charade is obvious.<\/p>\n The reason why the last incarnation of Documenta provoked such violent attacks is that Ruangrupa, the Indonesian collective that curated it, was committed to the true meaning of intersectional solidarity. They understood that to recognize feminist and queer interventions against heteronormative patriarchy, or Black interventions against the theory and practice of slavery, one must also include Indigenous interventions against settler colonialism.<\/p>\n For the German state, expressions of these concerns are tolerable \u2014 except those that display solidarity with the Palestinian people or criticism of the State of Israel.\u00a0<\/p>\n Of course, this made no sense to Ruangrupa. How could anyone claim to care about intersectional solidarity while throwing one community under the bus? As a result, the participating Palestinian artists, any artists showing solidarity with Palestine, or even any artist simply criticizing the State of Israel in their work, were silenced.<\/p>\n Following the fallout of the last edition, Documenta published a new code of conduct<\/a> ostensibly meant to \u201cprotect against anti-Semitism, racism, and any other form of group-related misanthropy,\u201d posted on the organization\u2019s website on February 3, 2025.<\/p>\n The code of conduct widely quotes the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance\u2019s (IHRA) highly controversial working definition of antisemitism, which has been criticized for conflating antisemitism with anti-Zionism \u2014 most vociferously by its lead author, Kenneth Stern. \u201cWhen you are asking institutions and governments to adopt a definition \u2014 to enshrine it, to consult it, to use it in codes and procedures \u2014 that\u2019s using the definition like a law,\u201d Stern wrote in a 2021 editorial for the Forward<\/a>. \u201cIHRA\u2019s zealous supporters often say that to combat antisemitism, one has to define it. In my view, that simply isn\u2019t true. It has been primarily used (and I argue, grossly abused) to suppress and chill pro-Palestinian speech.\u201d Human rights groups, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have also warned<\/a> that the IHRA\u2019s definition equates criticism of Israeli policy with hatred of Jews, erasing Palestinian voices in the process.<\/p>\n Sometime after June 24, Documenta added a parenthetical disclaimer to its website<\/a>, qualifying that \u201cthe Artistic Direction and the Artistic Team of Curators are not subject to the Code of Conduct.\u201d Reached by Hyperallergic, a spokesperson for Documenta reiterated that \u201cartistic freedom applies without restriction to the curatorial work.\u201d However, the Code of Conduct also states, in no uncertain terms: \u201cWithin three months of their election, the respective Artistic Direction of the Documenta exhibition shall present their curatorial concept \u2026 and explain how they intend to ensure respect for human dignity while safeguarding the constitutionally protected artistic freedom at the exhibition they curate.\u201d<\/p>\n Since Documenta\u2019s barometer for assessing the \u201crespect for human dignity\u201d uses the IHRA definition of antisemitism, it follows that the artistic and curatorial teams are beholden to the warped logic of that definition. Hyperallergic attempted to clarify this point with the organization and its new artistic team; Documenta declined to comment further.<\/p>\n However you spin it, the adoption of this definition of antisemitism effectively means that Documenta 16, the forthcoming edition planned for September 2027, will be required to exclude any artworks that are critical of the State of Israel.<\/p>\n The content of the exhibition hardly matters. The real curatorial responsibility of the team is the execution of omission.<\/p>\n To consciously elide any work that confronts a nation-state conducting a genocide is necessarily experienced as violent \u2014 not only for victims and survivors, but also for all those morally opposed to the atrocity \u2014 because silence or denial compounds the original violence rather than neutralizes it.<\/p>\n Genocide not only annihilates people physically; it also seeks to erase<\/a> their existence, memory, and humanity. When acknowledgment is withheld, the perpetrators\u2019 logic of erasure is extended: victims are treated as if they never lived, as if their suffering doesn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n The announcement of an all-woman artistic team was celebrated by many in the art world as evidence of a brave and radical choice. But it is also true that cultural workers, among them women, people of color, and individuals from other traditionally marginalized groups, have long been used as Trojan horses for the German cultural ministry.<\/p>\n