BERLIN — International Fascisms, curated by Cosmin Cosinas and Paz Guevara and presently on view at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), options the work of greater than 50 worldwide artists. Within the catalog, HKW Director Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung quotes Michel Foucault: “The major enemy is fascism … not only historical fascism, but also the fascism in our heads, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates us.”
If solely we might heed our personal citations.
The HKW stands on the location of the previous Institute for Sexual Science, inaugurated in 1919 by Magnus Hirschfeld, doctor, activist, and founding father of the world’s first LGBTQ+ rights group. From the early Nineteen Twenties onward, Hirschfeld grew to become a goal of the far proper in Germany, together with the Nazi Celebration, and on Could 10, 1933, the institute’s library and archives have been publicly hauled out and burned within the streets.
HKW was inbuilt 1957 on the rubble of this fascism. Its bar nonetheless bears Hirschfeld’s title and its backyard honors Lili Elbe, the Danish painter and transgender lady whom he cared for earlier than her gender-affirming surgical procedure — the primary of its form. HKW was a postwar present from the US to West Berlin and is a putting emblem of Chilly Warfare ideology and its use of soppy energy. Its sweeping roof and glass facade have been meant to represent freedom, transparency, and democratic openness, a visible and ideological counterpoint to the rigidity of Soviet structure on the opposite facet of the Berlin Wall. It projected the values of the “free world” by tradition, framing modernist design as proof of liberal superiority. Many years later, now beneath Ndikung’s route, it serves as a venue for postcolonial and world discourse. A constructing as soon as erected to advertise Western universalism at present homes debates searching for to deconstruct it.
Costume social gathering on the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft with Magnus Hirschfeld (second from proper) (© Archiv of Magnus-Hirschfeld-Gesellschaft)
HKW is funded nearly fully by the federal authorities. In a Germany that has been hijacked by Staatsräson (purpose of state) — that means its unconditional assist for the State of Israel — this funding has a worth: preemptive obedience. Ndikung’s appointment as director got here with the situation that he publicly surrender the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) motion; in 2022, shortly earlier than assuming workplace, he did so in a number of media shops.
The 2019 German anti-BDS decision labeled the motion antisemitic, successfully criminalizing dialogue itself. The result’s a collapse of distinction between criticism of Israel and antisemitism — between the critique of state coverage and the supposed denial of Israel’s so-called “right to exist.”
When somebody of Ndikung’s stature disavows BDS, it isn’t solely ideological, it’s also an abandonment of Palestinians and all those that have acted in solidarity. As soon as a custodian of essential tradition, HKW has grow to be a mannequin of capitulation to state management. Equally, Berlin, as soon as a haven for dissent, has grow to be a capital of censorship. A cultural house complicit in censoring and criminalizing artists who specific solidarity with Palestine is now mounting an exhibition on “the machinations of fascism”; the irony is insupportable.
Sliman Mansour, “Camel of Hardship” (1974)
Outdoors HKW’s glass partitions, Berlin seethes with intimidation: press smears, police violence, censorship. These are all signs of the fascism the exhibition pretends to diagnose. Not one work within the exhibition acknowledges the world burning simply past the door. In Jara Nassar’s phrases, “What is the role of art when the world is on fire?”
The museum’s assimilative drive even managed to cultivate the sculpture “Council with emblem” (2025) by South African artist Jane Alexander. These are the haunted cousins of her “Butcher Boys” (1985–86) that glared again on the South African apartheid regime on the peak of the wrestle. As an adolescent in Johannesburg, I sought solace in these sculptures’ potential to harm each viewers and the regime. Right here, nonetheless, her work appears embalmed, their rebel energy neutralized.
“What does fascism do?” Ndikung asks in his catalog essay. “It denigrates and exterminates those deemed inferior.” By that measure, the inclusion of Palestinian painter Sliman Mansour ought to be very important, but the curators selected solely his gentlest metaphorical work. “Camel of Hardship” (1974) is described within the present’s texts as “a possible allegory of the burden of Palestinian existence under occupation.” At a time of genocide, such restraint looks like evasion. The viewers’s consolation appears the curatorial precedence. No rubble, no our bodies — fascist violence made tasteful for modernist partitions.
Roee Rosen, “Absolute Victory” from the collection Gaza Warfare Tattoos (2024–25)
Not distant hangs the work of Israeli artist Roee Rosen, the shut proximity serving as a handy normalizing gesture. In accordance with the catalog, his pictures collection, Gaza Warfare Tattoos (2024–25), explores “the cultural meaning of tattoos in the context of the ongoing atrocious war.” Solely an Israeli artist is allowed to answer the present occasions; the Palestinian is relegated to exhibiting decades-old work. Furthermore, a genocide is lowered to an “atrocious war” after which additional abstracted right into a “context” for inventive musings. Rosen’s images depict non permanent tattoos utilized to varied White our bodies. In accordance with the catalog, “’The Dreadful Dreidel: A Military Poem’ is composed exclusively from the names given by the Israeli army to its military violence during the current century.”
By “military violence” I perceive Rosen to be referencing the 19 IDF Operations performed in Gaza, and one in Jenin, between 2004 and 2024. Based mostly on conservative UN estimates, 5,200 Palestinians and 102 Israeli troopers have been killed and greater than 24,000 Palestinians in addition to 858 Israeli troopers have been severely injured within the “operations,” the names of that are painted on this White mannequin’s again. These figures don’t embody the so-called operation “Iron Swords” — the Israeli time period for the genocide the nation has unleashed upon Gaza for 2 years and counting, which has killed no less than 70,000 Palestinians, with estimates ranging as much as 680,000 murdered.
Roee Rosen, “The Dreadful Dreidel: A Military Historical Poem” (2025)
Germany’s unwavering assist for Israel’s warfare on Gaza can endure provided that dissent is extinguished right here. What have been as soon as our most progressive establishments and artists have grow to be devices of that silence, serving to the genocide to proceed politely. When an establishment reaches this stage of corruption, it neutralizes any political potential of the artwork it shelters. Each work turns into a prop within the pretense of inclusion, queerness, Indigeneity, and postcolonialism. This theater serves the establishment’s simulation of anti-fascism.
As Berlin’s former tradition minister Joe Chialo declared, “We must distinguish art from activism.” However when governments outline artwork’s boundaries, it’s an indication of democracy changing into performative. Germany is aware of this historical past: Gleichschaltung in 1933 certain each cultural establishment right into a single ideological machine.
The fascism we stay beneath has not abolished tradition; it has perfected its manipulation by occupying our cultural establishments and appointing administrators keen to comply with orders. The truth that these establishments — apparently in full seriousness — interact with “global fascisms” whereas blithely enabling it at house is salt within the wound of the German cultural scene’s demise.
International Fascisms continues at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10, Berlin, Germany) by December 7. The exhibition was curated by Cosmin Cosinas and Paz Guevara.
