IN DOUBT FOR THE WHITE MAN?
Since the list of artists to be featured on an ‘international group exhibition’ at the NRW Forum in Düsseldorf became public on 11 September 2018, the exhibition in question— Im Zweifel für den Zweifel: Die große Weltverschwörung [When in Doubt, Choose Doubt: The Great World Conspiracy]—has evoked strong discussion and debate on social media and beyond. The broad public reaction can be attributed not only to the fact that the list of artists for this ‘international’ exhibition is almost exclusively white, but also to the fact that the published list of artists includes only a single woman (in addition to twelve men and three artist collectives, one of which is exclusively male). In all fairness, shortly after the public outcry began, a second woman artist was expediently added to the list, much to her surprise….
How is it possible—in the year 2018—that publicly-financed institutions continue to present exhibitions that are thoroughly unrepresentative of the diverse audiences that they serve? How is it possible that an ‘international’ exhibition, one that sets out to address a global phenomenon, is composed almost exclusively of works by white men? It must be said, that rather than being an exception to the curatorial practice of the NRW Forum, this particular exhibition is just one example of the exclusionary curatorial approach that prevails at this particular institution. Other recent ‘international group exhibitions’ hosted by the NRW Forum have, likewise, focused almost exclusively on the practice of white men from Europe and North America: Mythos Tour de France (2017), for example, included the name of a single woman in a list of 20 artists. More recently, Pizza Is God (2018) included the names of just two women among 26 participating artists.
IM ZWEIFEL ZWEIFELN 