As soon as I mentioned my interest in the elusive boundary between art and everyday to a random artworld inhabitant met in a gallery, my project was mercilessly trashed. “Art is just a colonial concept structured by capital”, i.e., it does not deserve further interrogation. Case closed.
Frequently playing with, on and around the boundaries, I am used to people occasionally rushing to protect them. After all, shared concepts and norms are essential for social cohesion and even one’s sense of sanity. But this gambit got under my skin. The retort was delivered so instantaneously, effortlessly, and with such an air of self-evidence. I could not reject any of its elements outright, yet the whole proposition sounded very disturbing. But what was causing my distress? Something in the logic of the reasoning or just the feeling of the rug being pulled from under my feet? Since if they were right, the only new knowledge my project could reveal would be the breadth of my naïveté and ignorance. Only the following day, I woke up with clarity – I had been framed in a narrow anti-colonial-anti-capitalist discourse with readily available answers to every question. Framed so quickly and decisively, I was suffocating before I could even register what was happening.
I don’t question the validity of the perspective offered, though. Someone whose culture does not have a direct equivalent to the western concept of art but was subjected to a forceful imposition of that concept may find resistance to be the only relevant response. But my lived experience is different. For me, in its western meaning, art was part of the resistance to colonisation and oppression. Maybe that’s why I am interested in further exploring its liberating potential. Maybe. But I don’t want to get stuck in some dark rabbit hole of introspection. The world out there is much more interesting than my reasons for thinking so. And reasons are afterthoughts anyway.
So, while art may be analysed for its colonial implications in specific settings or its entanglement in the flows of capital, it can also be used for various other purposes from a multitude of perspectives, ranging from reproduction to subversion and innovation. And currently, I am curious about the role of framing in that. So, for the time being the case remains open.
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