East Contemporary

Dům Umění: Tamara Moyzes “Artivism”

Malinovského 2, Brno, http://www.dum-umeni.cz

On the ground floor of Dum umeni, in one large room, the exhibition of Tamara Moyzes covered a few of her recent projects. As the title suggests, Tamara Moyzes’ work is on the edge between art and political activism. Most of the ‘work’ on display consisted of grabbed TV news reports reporting on issues that she was directing attention to with her actions: The Nazi background of an assistant of one Czech minister, the construction of a shopping mall in Prague on the site where Jews were gathered for transport to concentration camps. In addition she curated a ‘mini-exhibition’ of three works of other authors working in similar ways to provide some context to what she is doing. I myself would almost question if this needs to be shown in the gallery at all. Everything put into a gallery becomes strangely conserved, detached from reality and self-indulgent. A lot of art is very narcissistic, because the artist put’s in a lot of himself. Tamara Moyzes’ work on display proposes to be acting in the name of public good, alerting a broad audience to issues that should be of their interest. So the quality of this art should be measured in a public reaction, in public space. Putting these works in a white cube, with a huge poster showing Yasser Arafat kissing Tamara Moyzes’ hand right at the entrance seems to work directly against the works (political actions) themselves. So in the end I stand in front of a decision: Either I am wrong about the political motive of ‘making the world a better place’. In that case, the alternative purpose of the work is a self-image campaign of Tamara Moyzes at the expense of the institution. Or Tamara Moyzes is indeed following a political agenda, trying to direct our attention to things that matter (which I hope). An in that case, even though I am sympathetic with the content, I have to say that the exhibition is not able to communicate the correct message, because what I see is a much too ego-centric presentation of one person, which on the whole hurts the good intent of political change.

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