Since 1955, Documenta, widely regarded as one of the art world’s most formidable events, has been held every five years in Kassel, Germany. The announcement of the artistic team of the next edition was widely praised: For the first time, the curators would be an all-female, POC team. However, considering what happened during their last edition, the motives behind this decision raise questions.
Documenta 15 was curated by Ruangrupa, the Indonesian collective 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.
For the German state, expressions of these concerns are tolerable — except those that display solidarity with the Palestinian people or criticism of the State of Israel. As a result, the participating Palestinian artists, any arti...