A week before I was supposed to leave for the opening of documenta fifteen in June 2022, I learned that my father needed a life-saving operation. Cancelling my trip from Budapest to Kassel immediately, I told myself that life is more important than art—finding out […]

Davra – ‘a circle of people who are united for a certain period of time.’1 When asked about the origin of the name of the Davra Collective, one of its members, Aïda Adilbek, explains its Persian origin and talks about the circle that can mean […]

How did we all end up here, in the so-called “season of darkness”? And how did I end up at a symposium with the same title and eventually wrote an article about it?  Both questions may seem out of place at first, but although answering […]

The debate around antisemitic accusations concerning documenta 15 has grown so large and so many issues were raised that already the sheer scope of it signifies the complexity of the problem. There are two points that I would like to explore here. Why did this […]

Documenta, despite an array of contentious issues, is an impressive convergence of perspectives. The 15th iteration of this global art showcase provided numerous possibilities and brought together a deliberate arrangement of strong viewpoints, and an amalgamation of myriad voices. This was not an event focused […]

When I arrived in Kassel in the first days of July, after an exhausting fifteen-hour journey, the city seemed like an unfamiliar acquaintance. It was like a direct continuation of the post-COVID universe I had experienced on the way there, where there was air travel, […]

When I received an invitation from the editors of Mezosfera to write a text about an artwork from this year’s Kassel documenta, I took it as an opportunity to, together with other writers of the magazine, actively and productively disagree with the policy of overshadowing […]

The radical rethinking of the international art exhibition at documenta fifteen was both exciting and provocative. It was bound to—indeed, designed to—create controversy. Ruangrupa’s brilliant strategy mingled the generally separate domains of creation, curation, and reception while firmly centering the Global South as subject of […]

Continued from part 1, Vidisha-Fadescha and Shaunak Mahbubani, co-curators of Party Office at documenta fifteen, spotlight two more transformative moments over the 100 days. Party Office, founded by Vidisha-Fadescha, is an anti-caste, antiracist, trans*feminist art and social space initiated in New Delhi, India, also manifesting […]

Vidisha-Fadescha and Shaunak Mahbubani, curators of Party Office at documenta fifteen recall the rollercoaster of energies, events, and emotions over the 100 days, spotlighting discrete milestones through a process of writing in the reflection of these luminous moments. Party Office, founded by Vidisha-Fadescha, is an […]

“A misunderstanding is also a kind of understanding.” This was my favorite phrase at university, frequently used by one of my teachers, referring to the phenomena when misinterpretation opens a new aspect of an artwork and sheds light on the position of the interpreter. Misunderstanding, […]

When visiting documenta fifteen in early August 2022, with an awareness of the vehement criticism directed at the event, it was the project of a lumbung member, the *foundationClass*collective that seemed to echo most clearly the structural contradictions, which also surrounded the mega-exhibition. Summarizing the […]

I have never been to Indonesia but one of my strongest desires is to visit it one day. And I am honestly incredibly grateful to ruangrupa art collective for planting this thought in my head and organizing this “paint the town red 100-day long museum” […]

documenta, the largest and most influential event of the art world beside the Venice Biennale, has always been surrounded by local and international scandal. d15 seems to have fulfilled an extreme agenda. In this thematic issue, we ask each contributor about their personal experiences at d15. Our questions were: What could be learnt at d15? Did it manage to change the perspective of Western visitors? What was the experience of non-Western artists and cultural practitioners? What did they teach and what could they learn as part of one of the most influential legitimizing and canonizing machine of the art world? To what extent did ruangrupa’s lumbung concept manage to change the power structures of the art world?