Power and complicity in the artworld: what can be done?

‘What do accountability, responsibility, and ethical leadership look like in the visual arts in the 21st century?,’ asks Art Basel Hong Kong’s Encounters curator Alexie Glass-Kantor, the chair of this Conversation. Over the past six months, movements such as #metoo and #WeAreNotSurprised have sent shock waves through the cultural sphere – and the artworld has hardly been left unscathed. The heightened awareness that has come in its wake has shown that the problem of discrimination is endemic, and not limited to sexual harassment. This historical moment affords a unique opportunity to challenge ingrained power structures, and prejudices still prevailing within the spaces of production and presentation of art.

The Real Talk l Power and Complicity panel tackles these difficult questions head-on and applies it to topics as far-reaching as the place of women in the arts to the representation of non-Western artists within the art historical canon. Rather than just concentrating on what has already been achieved, each of the panelists was asked to consider what more can be done.

Find out more about how they envisage change here.

Participants:

Annette Schömmel, Vice Chairman & Managing Director,  arthesia AG, Zurich/Los Angeles/Hong Kong; Xiaoyu Weng, Associate Curator of Chinese Art, The Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation,  Solomon R.Guggenheim Museum, New York; Folakunle Oshun, Founder and Artistic Director,  Lagos Biennial 2017, Lagos/Potsdam; Özge Ersoy, Public Programmes Lead,  Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong;  Matthew Tsang Man Fu, Artist, Hong Kong.

Moderated by Alexie Glass-Kantor, Curator, Art Basel in Hong Kong Encounters Sector, and Executive Director, Artspace , Sydney.

The panel discussion took place during Art Basel Hong Kong in March 2018.