Ravaged: Art and Culture in Times of Conflict

Adel Abdessemed, Lida Abdul, Sven Augustijnen, Fernando Bryce, Cai Guo-Qiang, Mona Hatoum, Emily Jacir, Lamia Joreige, Michael Rakowitz, Mona Vatamanu & Florin Tudor During the night of 25 August 1914, a library holding 230,000 volumes went up in flames. The centenary of this incident prompted the exhibition Ravaged: Art and Culture in Times of Conflict. The burning of Leuven, a university town to the east of Brussels, sent a shockwave around the world, and the image of the burned-out library went down in history. It heralded the start of the deliberate destruction of cultural resources as a strategy of twentieth-century warfare. The plundering and destruction of libraries, museums, statues, temples, churches, mosques and other cultural patrimony has always been with us, as has the looting of books, paintings and works of art. Moreover they have been an important theme in artistic representation since ancient times and remain so to the present day. Two narratives are interwoven in Ravaged: a first historical strand emphasises what happened in Leuven during the First World War, while a second art-historical approach features about a hundred works dating from the fifteenth to the twenty-first century. In inviting contemporary artists to participate in the exhibition, the curators wanted to reveal which ideological and visual strategies they develop whilst interrogating the role of artistic representation today, or formulating critical reflections on the legitimacy of historiography. For centuries towns and cities have been the theatres of battle. A city that appears to have incorporated an incessant cycle of destruction and regeneration in its myth of origin is Beirut. Artists try to find their own place in this historiography: Mona Hatoum evokes the memory of her native city as an apocalyptic physical landscape, while Lamia Joreige investigates the past, searching for moments when the city has been in danger. In other artistic creations destruction is embodied in the materials or media used in creating the actual work of art. Cai Guo-Qiang tackles the legacy of Hiroshima in a homeopathic manner: fire is fought with fire. Mona Vatamanu and Florin Tudor approach the destruction of architectural heritage by reintroducing the material residue left after its destruction: pure pulverised dust. The most staggering destruction of cultural heritage in recent decades is that of the Bamiyan Buddhas by the Taliban. Lida Abdul condemns this act by reusing fragments of the rubble in a 16mm film. A Belgian, post-colonial history is presented by Sven Augustijnen in a new commission concentrating on the history of a destroyed Lumumba monument in Stanleyville, Congo, in 1964. Fernando Bryce has created a new work related to ‘propaganda.’ During the First World War the ethno-historical connotations of the concept of ‘vandalism’ were exploited to the fullest. Bryce focuses on the destruction of the university library in Leuven and the cathedral in Reims, incorporating pamphlets, magazines and postcards, mainly produced in Belgium and France. Works of art are also plundered, stolen from museums or dug up illegally from archaeological sites. Anchored in the tradition of institutional critiques, Michael Rakowitz‘s plywood remake of Babylon’s Ishtar Gate prompts a reflection upon the many threads that tie together the history of empire, colonial expansion and the birth of modern museum culture. At the end of the exhibition Emily Jacir simultaneously returns us to our point of departure with the pillaging and obliteration of books and libraries, the ultimate symbol of the destruction of culture and knowledge. So it is that local stories transcend themselves and join a litany of destruction and plunder that is as good as endless. The contemporary section is accompanied by the publication Art and Culture in Times of Conflict: Contemporary Reflections (edited by Ronald Van de Sompel), with essays and interviews by Pier Luigi Tazzi, Bariaa Mourad, Asada Akira, Mihnea Mircan, Dorothée Dupuis, Octavio Zaya, Dieter Roelstraete, and Eva Scharrer, amongst others. The book is published by Mousse Publishing in collaboration with M – Museum Leuven. Curators: Ronald Van de Sompel (contemporary art) and Eline Van Assche (old masters) Press contact: Veerle Ausloos: veerle.ausloos@leuven.be / T +32 (0) 16 27 29 36 For more information on our contemporary programme, e-mail mvips@leuven.be to register. M is supported by the City of Leuven, the Province of Flemish Brabant and the Flemish Community. The exhibition has been organised in collaboration with KU Leuven, ‘Cultural History since 1750′ and University Archives, with the assistance of the Flemish Government and Visit Flanders.