To Be Political

I believe every public work is political, the question is only on which level, how direct the work is, and how aware we are of this fact.

To be political means staying and working in a country that half of my generation is leaving for economic reasons, and in which tourism is the only remaining industry.

To be political means squatting a place in a city where every other window is abandoned, the mayor is corrupt and acting solely in his own interest.

Being aware of the socioeconomic context is political, my private life is political, my actions are political, and it is a political decision to make all of this visible in my artwork.

To be political means not instrumentalizing the topic I am dealing with in my artwork. The readiness to disregard the notion of authorship in my artwork if the project is socially engaged is a political decision. If the project involves the local community. In order to make the topic visible, not the author.

To be political means talking about the context of the work, about the public. To be political means changing the piece for specific context every single time.

To be political doesn’t mean finishing a piece of art just because the project is finished and the catalogue must be printed.

To be political means pushing yourself one step further in very piece and in every exhibition, even if that means you can fail.

To be political means being engaged in seven projects at the same time, while the four of them are completely voluntary, because I believe in them. For the other three I get half the regular fee because they are political.

To be political means questioning your own position.

To be political means dealing with this question at the last minute because most of my time is spent fighting for equal rights in my local community, reacting to political censorship, the privatization of public goods, and the lack of social rights in the country I live.