Here’s an issue of cultural discussion of a rather more controversial sort:
STOCKHOLM (AFP) – Israel’s ambassador to Sweden was kicked out of Stockholm’s Museum of National Antiquities after he destroyed an artwork featuring a picture of a Palestinian suicide bomber, the artists said.
The incident, widely reported in the Swedish media, occurred at the opening on Friday of the “Making Differences” exhibit, part of an upcoming international conference on genocide hosted by the Swedish government and in which Israel is scheduled to participate.
…..
The art installation, called Snow White and located in the museum’s courtyard, featured a basin filled with red water, designed to look like blood.A sailboat with the name Snow White floated on the water, and placed like a sail was a photo of a smiling Hanadi Jaradat, the female lawyer who blew herself up in the Haifa suicide bombing attack in October which killed 21 Israelis.
“For me it was intolerable and an insult to the families of the victims. As ambassador to Israel I could not remain indifferent to such an obscene misrepresentation of reality,” the ambassador told Swedish news agency TT.
…..
One of the two artists who created the work, Israeli-born Dror Feiler, told AFP the ambassador was “totally unreasonable and undiplomatic” and would not listen to his explanations.“He said he was ashamed that I was a Jew,” Feiler said. “We see this as an offensive assault on our right to express our thoughts and feelings.”
The other artist, Feiler’s Swedish wife Gunilla Skoeld Feiler, told daily Expressen that the work was “not a glorification of the suicide bomber.”
“I wanted to show how incomprehensible it is that a mother-of-two, who is a lawyer no less, can do such a thing,” she said.
“When I saw her picture in the paper, I thought she looked like Snow White, that’s why I gave that name to the piece,” she added.
See also here and here. From the latter:
[T]he expatriate Israeli artist, Dror Feiler, rejected the criticism of his work, saying it had a message of openness and conciliation.
“I’m absolutely opposed to suicide bombers,” he added.
Mr Feiler called the envoy “an intellectual dwarf” who had tried to “stop free speech and free artistic expression”.
It may not be prudent to adopt a firm view without having seen the art work in question. But provisionally I would say that Israel’s ambassador acted intemperately and foolishly; a quieter protest would have been more effective. And the organizers of an event about genocide might also have given some thought to the aptness of this particular piece. At the same time, the most difficult issue is the ascription of meaning to art in politically volatile contexts. The pleas of these two artists concerning free expression are to be taken seriously. But the view that the artist is authoritative in deciding what his or her work means is not easy to defend. They can say what they intended, but that is something else. Meaning is in the public domain and often escapes the purposes of its initiators. Personally, I find one of the statements of the artists quoted here – ‘I thought she looked like Snow White’ – fatuous in the given context; and another – ‘it had a message of openness and conciliation. “I’m absolutely opposed to suicide bombers”‘ – a good instance of the point I’ve just made. In light of the description of the work that these reports give us, I don’t think Dror Feiler’s thought would necessarily be clear to everyone.
(First two items via Drudge Report. Hat tip: MN.)