MuseumsNews visited Documenta 14’s main venue, EMST Athens.
Gathering both praises and negative reviews from the local press, Documenta 14 is the fourteenth edition of the art exhibition Documenta and is taking place in both its traditional home in Kassel, Germany and in Athens, Greece.
Controversy largely revolves around the installation The Greek Way (further analysed below), the state approving and controlling the exhibition, working conditions for invigilators and the expense of such a venture in a financially distraught city.
Documenta 14 will be held first in Athens in a series of galleries and spaces spread throughout the city from 8 April till 16 July 2017 and then in Kassel from 10 June till 17 September 2017.
All photos by Con Chrisoulis.
Probably the most controversial installation in the exhibition, The Greek Way juxtaposes Leni Riefenstahl’s homoerotic Nazi/Ancient Greek imagery, on one side of the room, with portraits of Adolf Hitler, the names of gay victims from the Nazi genocide (incl. their dates of birth and execution) painted over the propaganda pieces, defacing the portraits.
The incredibly expensive Documenta 14 shop in EMST’s ground floor (the transparent A4 “backpack” going for a cold €90, in a city ravaged by the financial crisis). Most products (t-shirts, sketchbooks, posters etc) had a large ’14’ stamped over them and the shop curiously lacked artistic representation, selling very few products from the artists themselves.
