It is therefore no coincidence that the vision behind “Propagandas”, a Jonas Staal solo exhibition at the Laveronica gallery in Modica, originated here in the small but precious archive of Sicilian militancy, inspired by the revolutionary Maria Occhipinti who to the cry of “We’re not going!” triggered the Ragusan revolt against the call to arms in 1945.
Set out on the three floors of a tall, narrow house in Via Garibaldi are photographs taken in Rojava, adding new faces to the old anarchist posters and historical documents featuring revolutionary and propagandist (precisely) iconography. On the walls is the Anatomy for a Revolution: Rojava series (2015), which visits the independence of Rojava, a Kurdish region in northern Syria that was declared autonomous in 2011. It offers glimpses and the aesthetics of everyday life and public meetings, a tool adopted by democratic federalism and come to symbolise the battle against ISIS.
This, in fact, is the starting point: is it possible to separate art and propaganda?
Using four case-studies, the Jonas Staal exhibition – the main corpus of which is concentrated in the Laveronica gallery in Modica – unfolds around the architectural aesthetic, seen as a model of representing a political thought that has witnessed often surprising changes over the years.
Jonas Staal’s work has long been structured around the relationship between art and politics, and is summed up in the concept of “propagandas” – in the plural as the word can adopt different meanings for the diverse forms of power that can influence the aesthetic of cultural production.
During revolutions, culture and art are forced to go through a redefinition process but the core issue is always centred on the same dichotomy: how can politics free art from propaganda and how can art free politics? Rojava is, perhaps, currently where these reflections are being manifested to the maximum.
For a couple of years or so, the artist and his organization New World Summit were commissioned by the autonomous government to design and build the construction of a permanent building that will host the parliament’s activities, giving rise to a new agora where democratic federalism can plant its roots.
Forging the link between architecture and ideology is the gallery’s unusual “grotto” containing Closed Architecture (2011), a rendering of a prison based on a degree dissertation project by the strongly nationalist Dutch MP Fleur Agema. As a young student, she proposed a model of prison life divided into four different stages, aimed at rehabilitating prisoners and turning them into productive members of society.
Staal sees architecture as a language that often physically reproduces the development of global economies and their social and political implications in the reconstruction of the social fabrics of Nations. Monument to Capital (2014-16) represents the capitals of high finance via the world’s tallest skyscrapers. The video was inspired by the Barclays Capital skyscraper index and shows, in graph form, an inversely proportional correlation between the construction of the world’s future tallest skyscrapers and the emergence of a new global financial recession.
until 13 June 2016
Jonas Staal – “Propagandas”
curated by Matteo Lucchetti
Laveronica Arte Contemporanea, Modica
with the collaboration of Sicilia Libertaria