documenta 14: Learning from Athens by Adam Szymczyk (review)

documenta 14 was masterminded by Adam Szymczyk and his team of fifteen curators, writers, and critics, among them Bonaventure Ndikung (Savvy Contemporary Berlin) as curator at large. Ndikung was in charge of the research for potential African contributors at home and abroad and communication with the sixteen of them who ultimately participated.

When developing his concept, Adam Szymczyk was irked by the German Finance Minister's statement that Greece should do its "homework" before receiving further loans to save the country from bankruptcy. Consequently, when unveiling his documenta project on October 6, 2014, Szymczyk described Greece as "a victim of neocolonial and neoliberal attitudes and humiliating stigmatization" because of its financial crisis (Meier 2017). In protest against such condescending attitudes, he chose Athens as an equal venue, titled this documenta Learning from Athens, and even opened the event in Greece two months before Kassel. Considering Greece's history of expansion and use of slaves, it is up to debate if he chose the perfect counter-example against neoliberal practice.

I came to Athens with several questions in mind. I wanted to see to what extent the African and African diaspora artists at documenta 14 would reflect clichéd expectations of so-called African contemporary artists. I was interested in the strategies they might adopt to resist being understood superficially and challenge viewers to explore deeper layers of meaning (for concepts of opacity and detour, see Britton 1999: 19). Also, I wondered whether new aesthetic expressions would be put on this art stage to challenge notions of complete and static commodified art works in contrast to open-ended, unfinished, and hard-to-commercialize processes (Rush 2013: 30). And last but not least, I wanted to find out to what extent the artists managed to produce miracles with scant funding, applying principles of economy and cultural alchemy to make gold from pebbles (Ngugi wa Thiongo'o 2012: 2). With those questions in mind, several of the contributions struck me as I made my way through the maze of venues in Athens.

1.

Ibrahama Mahama
Check Point Prosfygika: 1934–2034 (2016–2017)
Performance at Syntagma Square, Athens.
Photo: Olaf Pascheit

2.

Otobong Nkanga
Carved to Flow (2017)
The artist in her soap-workshop in Athens, Archimidous Street 15.
Photo: Olaf Pascheit

Like his contribution in Kassel, Ibrahim Mahama (b. 1987, Ghana) presented an arresting work in Syntagma Square adapted to the location and its history but here called Check Point Prosfygika. 1934–2034 (2016–2017; Fig. 1). The Royal Palace became the Greek parliament building in 1934 and its location renamed for the constitution—syntagma—that King Otto had been compelled to grant to the people in 1843. Prosfygika refers to the Greek refugees who arrived in 1922 from Turkey. Mahama chose the most symbolic location in recent Greek history and there orchestrated a performance with volunteers sewing jute sacks together to form a huge carpet alluding to trade, migration, and socioeconomic processes. He succeeded in creating an encounter of two aesthetics, the open-ended and the unfinished, by launching a process that looks unlikely to be accomplished, alluding to Greek mythology, in which, in the Odyssey, Penelope undid at night what she wove during the day. At the same time he referenced canonized works of Arte Povera artists, such as Janis Kounellis and Alberto Burri, who produced similar aesthetic effects with materials used in their working processes.

Less exposed to the public was the project by Otobong Nkanga (b. 1974, Nigeria), Carved to Flow (2017; Fig. 2), a soap workshop in a quiet neighborhood near the Athens School of Fine Arts (ASFA). Like Mahama, she wanted to discuss working conditions and access to resources by tracing the trade routes of ingredients from Africa for manufacturing and selling soap, in this case black soap made according to an old Greek recipe. Later, in Kassel, each visitor was allowed to buy a single piece of soap for...