Poison Soluble by French artist Jean-Jacques Lebel has been described by Farah Abdessamad as “a gruesome maze-like installation”, showing “panels of tortured Iraqi bodies at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison during the US invasion of Iraq.” The graphic content of these images has resulted in Iraqi artists withdrawing from Germany’s Berlin Biennale.
In the public apology from the Berlin Biennale, they claimed to have “underestimated the sensitivity of the situation" and also apologized “for failing to discuss the placement” of images from Abu Ghraib prison. According to Art News, the Poison Soluble is hidden behind a curtain with a trigger warning, urging viewers who have “experienced racial trauma or abuse” not to enter it.
But how can responses to a crime of enormity like torture be “underestimated”, when America’s actions at Abu Ghraib turned the prison into a crime scene and when the city of Berlin has also been a crime scene on two separate occasions? Is the Berlin Biennale sincere in its apology, or is this just an attempt to whitewash over its own failures to learn from history?
It was Sophie Scholl who stated “stand up for what you believe in even if you are standing alone”, and across Berlin there are institutions which the Berlin Biennale could have consulted, if they were genuinely concerned about the sensitivity of displaying real life images of torture and what they represent.
Between 1933 and 1945, the central institutions of Nazi persecution – the Secret State Police and the leadership of the SS – were located on the present-day grounds of the Topography of Terror in Berlin. The aims of the Topography of Terror Foundation is to “relay historical information about National Socialism and to encourage people to actively confront this history.”
On the 8th February 1950, the German Democratic Republic’s People’s Chamber unanimously passed a “Bill to establish a Ministry for State Security”. Today, the Stasi Archives provide an online window into thousands of documents, photo’s, audio and video material which provides an in-depth view of the East German intelligence community.
The Berlin based Stasi Museum is also located in House 1 on the former grounds of the headquarters of the GDR's Ministry for State Security. The building was erected in 1960-61 and since 1990, the Museum has shown different exhibitions, providing information about the GDR’s State Security and how its activities affected the population.
When history looks back on the 12th Berlin Biennale, it will be viewed through a prism of confusion. Historians will ask why photographs by torturers were viewed as "contemporary art" and why organizers failed to communicate with those shown in the pictures of Abu Ghraib. History will also ask, if anything has actually been learned from the 2003 invasion of Iraq, or if man is destined to keep repeating the same mistakes?
Hussein Al-alak is the editor of Iraq Solidarity News (Al-Thawra). You can follow @husseinalalak on Twitter.
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