If you were curating an exhibition called Passion for Freedom, would you be bold enough to censor out an artist’s work? Perhaps if what they submitted was truly offensive or traumatic you’d draw a line, at the risk of being seen as ridiculous. I am no hard-core liberal, but it would take something pretty violent or deeply prejudiced against, say, the disabled, for me to deny any artwork a public viewing.
If the public hate an artwork, at least that’s their own judgement. They may well have hated ISIS Threaten Sylvania, a series of tableaux by British artist, Mimsy, depicting the popular plush animal figurines dressed as members of the notorious terrorists. Nonetheless, I was pretty shocked to read that it had been excluded from the exhibition, especially when so many of the other pieces deal with equally sensitive topics, such as the stoning of women in Iran. What is so terrible about an artist buying some very expensive toy animals and dressing them up as jihadists?
The curators say the works aren’t really art. Fair enough. If your definition of art includes the use of creative skills which no-one else could recreate, Mimsy’s MICE-IS was not the most worthy of gallery space. Some people do define art purely as an original or creative expression of an idea. ISIS Threatens Sylvania certainly provokes thought in audiences, especially those spooky scenes which have been played out in real life since being conceptualised in art – terrorists approaching holiday makers on a beach or schoolgirls in a lesson. The Sylvanian characters under attack feel very western in terms of their activities and how they are dressed, with one scene showing the fluffy creatures enjoying a beer in a pub garden. This seems to be the artist’s main point – that we in the west cannot reduce the threat of extremism to something foreign and far away. As a Brit with Syrian roots, Mimsy has said that the threat feels very close and personal to her, and the aim of her work was to show how close it really is to everyone else in the UK.
This is undeniably a strong message and one that I feel would have added an interesting stimulus for discussion to the Passion for Freedom exhibition. There are important questions to be raised about the racialisation of the issue. Does a British audience need to see ISIS in terms of our own culture to appreciate the danger and, if so, why? The exhibition’s curators have denied the public these discussions and undermined their own principles. They have already had to take the word ‘uncensored’ off all publicity relating to the exhibition.
The exhibition’s curators have undermined their own principles
What was so scary about this particular piece? As far as I can tell, there are two potential problems. Either it makes light of ISIS by showing them as children’s toys or it brings the terrorists uncomfortably close to home. If the curators were upset by the first issue, it would be interesting to see where they stand on irony regarding other topics. The toys could arguably represent some part of the artist’s message, or at least an attempt to show the terrorists up as the childish idiots they truly are. If the second problem was the curators’ motivating factor, they might not be the right people to run this kind of exhibition. People don’t need shielding, surely, from messages about the danger of terrorism.
A third possibility which must unfortunately be considered in this day and age is fear of repercussions. ISIS supporters are famously irrational and may have decided to attack the gallery for its use of the devil’s favourite animal figurines. However, with appropriate policing strategies, any attempted attack could result in an arrest and one less extremist on the streets of Britain. Given that how we use our freedom of speech is an increasingly moral choice, those with control over what the public consume may need to adjust their priorities.
All too often, we see this freedom used against the vulnerable, from ethnic minorities to LGBTQ+ people. It should be used instead to prove that terrorists can’t scare us out of making art.