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With tension mounting surrounding her solo show at Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie, Nan Goldin delivered an impassioned speech at the exhibition’s opening in which she called on Germany to take seriously those who are seeking a ceasefire in Israel’s war in Gaza.
Goldin’s show there, a traveling version of a survey featuring her photographs and films, has become a source of controversy in the German press, which has fixated on her signature of a letter published in Artforum last year that called for a ceasefire in Gaza. That letter did not initially mention Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack, which has led some German outlets to claim that Goldin’s endorsement of the letter was antisemitic.
“The word antisemitism has been weaponized,” Goldin said during the opening, video of which was posted to social media. “It’s lost its meeting. In declaring all criticism of Israel as antisemitic, it makes it harder to define and stop violent hatred against Jews.”
She went on to note a concurrent rise in Islamophobia that she said was being “ignored” by the German state. “The weaponization of antisemitism is being aimed at the Palestinian community in this country and those who speak in support for them,” she added. “The ICC is talking about genocide. The UN is talking about genocide. Even the Pope is talking about genocide. Yet we’re not supposed to talk about this as genocide. Are you afraid to hear this, Germany?”
During her speech, she called for a four-minute moment of silence for Gaza. Then, as the German publication Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported, Neue Nationalgalerie director Klaus Biesenbach appeared to explicitly rebut Goldin before the assembled audience. He noted that he disagreed with Goldin, even as he affirmed her right to her opinion.
“For us, Israel’s right to exist is beyond question. The Hamas attack on the Jewish state on October 7, 2023 was a cruel act of terror that cannot be justified in any way,” Biesenbach reportedly said before adding, “At the same time, we sympathize with the civilian population in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, whose suffering cannot be ignored.”
As Goldin and Biesenbach spoke, some attendees waved Palestinian flags. According to FAZ, Biesenbach was shouted at while he spoke.
Against the backdrop of a debate over Goldin’s show in Germany, the artist previously bowed out of speaking at a symposium on antisemitism, Islamophobia, and the war in Gaza, according to the German press agency dpa. She said on social media that the symposium, to be held this Sunday at the Neue Nationalgalerie, had been arranged without her knowledge and that the event was an attempt by the museum to “prove they do not support my politics.”
Following her comment on the Instagram account of Strike Germany, a movement that urges artists not to work with institutions that uphold the German state’s “McCarthyist policies” on the war in Gaza, several artists pulled out of the event. Hito Steyerl, who was initially expected to deliver a keynote speech, said she would no longer participate last week. Afterward, artists Candice Breitz and Eyal Weizman also canceled appearances planned for the event.
In a statement about the symposium sent to ARTnews earlier this week, Biesenbach said, “With the symposium ‘Art and Activism in Times of Polarisation: Space for Discussion on the Middle East Conflict’, curated by Saba-Nur Cheema and Meron Mendel, we intend to provide much-needed space for a constructive, long overdue debate. We are asking the urgent questions about the responsibility of political art in the current context of the Middle East conflict on the occasion of Nan Goldin’s exhibition, as she stands for political engagement as an activist artist.”
His statement said that the symposium was planned “independently” of Goldin, whose work, he claimed, would not be addressed at the event. “We fully support the artist’s right to express her opinion, even if we don’t always agree with her,” he added.