Hamburg, pro-Palestinian artwork vandalized at Kunstverein

Politically motivated vandalism at Hamburg’s Kunstverein : that’s according to the museum, which in a post on its social channels lets it be known that Phoebe Collings-James’ site-specific work titled red earth, blood earth, blood brother earth [kick dirt] has been maimed by a visitor.

This large-scale installation, commissioned for the exhibition In and out of Place. Land after Information 1992-2024 at the Kunstverein, aims to measure up to the enduring legacy of colonialism by drawing inspiration from the poem Return to My Native Land (1939) by the Martinique writer and politician Aimé Césaire through intricate drawings and writings rendered in clay slip on the gallery floor. By referencing artists such as Beverly Buchanan and Donald Locke, who are considered outside the U.S. Land Art canon, Collings-James wants to challenge the Eurocentric narratives that dominate the movement’s history: at one point in the installation a number of writings appear with names of countries and areas that Collings-James believes would have suffered more than others the price of colonialism and Eurocentrism: Congo, Sudan, Palestine, Haiti.

A visitor, as yet unknown, vandalized a section of the installation where the word Palestine appeared, erasing the writing. The Kunstverein Hamburg, the museum writes in its note, “unequivocally condemns this politically motivated act of vandalism and has reported the damage to the authorities who are investigating it as a hate crime.”

Collings-James, from his Instagram profile, in unveiling the work had made an appeal of sorts, “Liberate Palestine. Liberation self-determination, freedom.”

Hamburg, pro-Palestinian artwork vandalized at Kunstverein

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