from the start, the museum tried to push them to “an expression of Afrofuturism that was palatable and lacking nuance,” which neglected the complex aspects of embodied blackness. The available space for the chapter was also cut down several times, pushing the team to exclude some artworks and an artist. “They added in Afrofuturism simply as "the Black chapter” of the exhibit, without any real knowledge of what Afrofuturism represents, what values are nested in Afrofuturism, etc.“
As it’s official reason, the museum claims:
"On 10 November, a post appeared on this [Duplan’s] account calling for support for the BDS network. The German Bundestag has categorized this network as anti-Semitic. The Museum Folkwang has therefore decided to end its collaboration with Anaïs Duplan.”
Anaïs Duplan’s chapter on Afrofuturism was cancelled on November 13th, just 3 days after the post. The museum never once contacted Duplan to talk about it before making their decision.
This also isn’t an isolated incident. On November 14th, just 1 day after Anaïs Duplan’s cancellation, Ranjit Hoskote, who was forced to resign from the selection comittee of Documenta, an extremely prestigious art exhibition in Kassel, Germany. Hoskote hadn’t even made recent statements but was targetted because someone found his signature on a long list of people who signed a statement by a BDS group from 2019. The statement was deemed antisemitic because of its connection to BDS and because it called Zionism a “racist ideology” and Israel as a “settler-colonial apartheid state.” Germany’s Green Party culture minister, Claudia Roth, warned of withdrawing state funding for Documenta if no action was taken against Hoskote. https://thewire.in/the-arts/curator-ranjit-hoskote-resigns-from-documentas-finding-committee-over-anti-semitism-allegations
The firings, cancellations and pressures to resign go back a few years though. They started even before the German government labelled BDS antisemitic in 2019. Museums have been on the frontline in the shut down of prominent critics of Israel. In 2019 the director of Berlin’s Jewish Museum was pressured and finally quit because he had invited Palestinian speakers to the museum and had cautioned against declaring BDS antisemitic. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/14/world/europe/berlin-jewish-museum-director-quits-bds.html
Needless to say: Germany has a problem.
Anaïs Duplan hopes to find a new venue for their exhibition-chapter on Afrofuturism and has already received offers. To know where to see their work, keep an eye on their website or instagram: https://worksofanais.com/ https://www.instagram.com/an.duplan/
