Intolerance in Liverpool: migrant-themed installation vandalized twice

Ugly episode of intolerance in Liverpool: The List, an installation by Turkish artist Banu CennetoÄŸlu (Ankara, 1970), which consists of a long list commemorating the 34,361 migrants who have died trying to reach Europe since 1993, has been vandalized twice. Specifically, the lists were torn up twice, the first time in July and the second shortly after Ferragosto. After the first act of vandalism, the work had been reinstalled, but evidently its message is too strong for the intolerant people, who thus decided to ruin it for the second time. In the end, CennetoÄŸlu decided to leave it displayed as it was found, with the torn sheets, as a warning against “the systematic violence exercised against people,” as the artist herself put it.

The work had been unveiled this year for the 2018 edition of the Liverpool Biennial, and from the moment it appeared on July 12, it has been the target of criticism, and now also of vicious, brutal and stupid attacks by intolerant vandals. CennetoÄŸlu, moreover, recalled that in none of the previous exhibitions (held in cities such as Berlin, Istanbul, Basel, and Athens) had the work, conceived back in 2007 and continuously updated since then, been vandalized. The Liverpool City Council expressed its displeasure at “this unreasonable act of vandalism” and made it known that it stands “side by side” with the organizers of the Liverpool Biennial.

The unspeakable and horrific act was stigmatized by many British critics and journalists. “Its defacement,” wrote Charlotte Higgins in an article in the Guardian, “is proof that art has become a political battleground. [...] We live in times that are dangerously restless. The arts, in their broadest sense, can no longer be seen as a boring, isolated zone, distant from the reality of politics. Culture is the new front line.” On Frieze, Tom Emery sees the vandalized work as a “monument to shame”: “CennetoÄŸlu’s decision to leave the half-destroyed work on display and not replace it again functions as a visual reminder that these things do in fact happen in Liverpool, and that in any case no place is immune to this kind of hatred, which may be far more widespread than we would like to admit. To replace the work again would be to ignore the problem [...]. Now, instead, the work stands as a monument to shame. It serves as a warning against extremists and anti-immigration ideas wherever they can be found, on the street but also in government classrooms.”

And certainly we need to think about the fact that the work, torn apart by those who are unable to accept the ideas of others and need to perform such an act, on the sly, to affirm their crude way of seeing the world, will perhaps sound even more terrible and its message will come even louder, since any censorship functions as a sounding board for an artist’s ideas.

Pictured: Banu CennetoÄŸlu’s work, The List, after the vandalism. Courtesy Banu CennetoÄŸlu

Intolerance in Liverpool: migrant-themed installation vandalized twice

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