Festivals of 2022: Looking Beyond Repair
By HG Masters
SAJJAD ABBAS, I Can See You, 2013, print image with Arabic words on each side in stencil, 5 × 9 m. Courtesy the artist.
Documenta was not the only mega-exhibition with a decolonial agenda that became plagued by controversy in Germany. Led by artist Kader Attia, the 12th Berlin Biennale (6/11–9/18) faced criticism over the display of the French artist Jean-Jacques Lebel’s installation Solvable Poison. Scenes from the American Occupation in Baghdad (2013), a maze of enlarged reproductions of the infamous photographs depicting torture and murder of Iraqi prisoners by members of the United States military at Abu Ghraib prison, and its relation to three Iraqi artists’ works.
