MULTIPLE IDENTITIES Deterritorialism
… This is alarming stuff. Not because these ideas are new or challenging, but because these ideas have been knocking about for God knows how many years. The international-mega exhibition has for many years privileged those artists who have a compulsive habit of flying hither and yon at the drop of a hat. To the point of being mundane, the language of deterritorialisation and of individuals simultaneously embodying multiple identities has long since become staple curatorial fodder. We might even suggest that in the current cultural/artistic climate, if an artist cannot demonstrate some hither and yon credentials or impulses, the he or she had better get used to being ignored by curators mesmerised by ultimately fatuous talk of deterritorialisation. Save for the ethnographic/anthropological exhibition, those artists who are unable/unwilling to wander the globe are rendered significantly less visible and less attractive to the curator’s wandering eye...
… None of the artists in Black My Story are symbolic of the raggedy arsed refugee fleeing persecution or the ‘economic migrant’ seeking a better life. Instead (at a time when most people in the West would still equate going abroad with going on holiday) the exhibition privileges those artists who are ascribed some sort of specialness due to the fact that they no longer live in the countries they were born in and can apparently travel the globe at will. But that in itself hardly makes someone remarkable or unusual or deserving of attention as an artist or as a person. Given the phenomenal patterns of migration that the world has seen in the 20th century, there can scarcely be a country that has not witnessed nor played host to multiple types of migration. I wonder if the likes of Lee and Roesink have only just caught up with this? Lee’s introductory notes make significant mention of the September 11 attacks. But such references – irrespective of what they actually amount to – have long since become wearisome, specious and, in many instances, even comical. Private Eye regularly runs a column featuring the best/worst of these references. My recent favourite was the straight-faced claim by the communications director of a chain of cheap American eateries that ‘the emotional and economic turmoil of 9/11 has prompted people to reconnect with friends and family through casual dining’. With September 11 being up for grabs by all and sundry, the wisest amongst us would do well to avoid referencing it at all – especially in the mock-worthy tones that Lee uses…
The above extracts are from a book review by Eddie Chambers titled “MULTIPLE IDENTITIES Deterritorialism”, the book was Black My Story, published by Museum de Paviljoens, Netherlands, 2003, Polemic, Art Monthly, London, Number 272, December 2003 – January 2004: 41-42