A ceramic floor installation by Phoebe Collings-James has been vandalised in Germany with the word ‘Palestine’ scratched out. The British artist’s red earth, blood earth, blood brother earth [kick dirt] (2024), was commissioned by Kunstverein Hamburg for the exhibition In and Out of Place. Land after Information 1992–2024.
Covering the gallery floor in ceramic slip, the artist carved in a series of patterns and drawings, including a list of four conflict-ridden states: Congo, Palestine, Sudan, Haiti. The vandal, as first reported by Art News, left the other three countries intact. Lying close by the artist had placed funereal black-glazed ceramic casts of roses.
On social media the institution noted: ‘Regrettably, an unknown visitor to the Kunstverein chose to deliberately deface a section of the installation in which the word Palestine appeared. The Kunstverein in Hamburg unequivocally condemns this act of politically motivated vandalism and has reported the damage to the authorities who are investigating it as a hate crime.’
Since the October 2023 attack by Hamas, and the ferocious and sustained military response by Israel on Palestine, a number of German talks, exhibitions and prizes have been cancelled or rescinded over pro-Palestine sentiments expressed by the artists in question, making Kunstverein’s robust backing of Collings-James noteworthy. In November James Bridle lost a German architecture award over his backing of the Israeli cultural boycott; in 2023 the Saarlandmuseum in Saarbrücken cancelled an exhibition of Candice Breitz, similarly over the artist’s support for Palestine.
