118 metaphor for language, art knows how to shake and awake, and skin, litmus of the world on the body, has always been a symbol of art and human rights. The livid skin painted by Lucian Freud, and the distorted one by Francis Bacon. The redeemed skin by Berlinde de Bruyckere, and the suspended one by Milena Altini. The skin of the vanquished, told by Curzio Malaparte (The skin, 1943) as our true homeland because, when rights fall silent, skin becomes our only shelter. The Man Who Sold His Skin, by Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania, tells the story of a Syrian refugee who, in order to reunite with his girlfriend in Europe, decides to have a Schengen visa tattooed on his back in order to become «a commodity, a canvas, so now I can travel all around the world because, in the times we are living, the circulation of commodities is much freer than that of a human being». Admittedly inspired by the real skin of Tim Steiner, tattooed in 2006 by the artist Wim Delvoye and already sold for 150 thousand euros to the Reinking Collection in Hamburg, which will exhibit it right after his death, the movie offers a fertile ground for reflection on some rights present in Declaration – the right to freedom of movement, the right of asylum, freedom of expression, copyright, the right to equality – and unequally guaranteed, depending on the portion of the world within which, fortunately or regrettably, one is born. From Tim's real skin to Sam's fake one, art enhances reflection on the connection between body and human rights through the meaning of projects such as Made in Italy© - Handle with care (2015) by Mustafa Sabbagh – 27 portraits of young men by the sea, quintessentially place destined for the traffic of commodities and men, vulnerable in their body, in their skin and in their being exposed like products presented, in a commercial language, through their technical characteristics, origin, typology – or as Useless Bodies?, an exhibition at the Fondazione Prada by the Scandinavian duo Elmgreen & Dragset, questioning the actual role of our bodies in the 21st century: dazzling white as if they were lifeless, but hyper-technological, downgraded to archives of data to be sold and resold to Big Techs. In art, the work of a lifetime is known as body. Wherever it feels that one right is absent or trampled, art becomes the body and the antibody. Human rights themselves are a body, to be looked after, to be defended. Today, there is a precise word used to define the action of art in defense of human rights: that word is artivism. Coined in the late Nineties in the United States, a historic refuge for art exiles harassed by regimes from all latitudes, artivists are those artists who, especially in that period from South America, make art on their own skin, in protest, in revolt, in denunciation, viscerally calling into question their body, their history, their visions. Ultimately, artists capable of making their very life a work of art, because their vocation, when sincere, can only be that of an authentic call to arms arts: «Even if unwittingly, we artists are involved. It is not struggle that makes us artists, but art that makes us struggle. By his very function the artist is the witness of freedom, and this is a motivation he is going to pay dearly. By his very function he is engaged in the most inextricable depths of history, where the very flesh of man suffocates» (Albert Camus, The Rebel: an essay on Man in revolt, 1951). You see it is not that easy. You see it takes more than photographing yourself lying face down on the beach of Lesbos, because when you can feel the stench of shortcut in the face of an enormous engagement like that of art, from great dissident artist to pompous self-proclaimed artist, it’s a snap. You see that curating yet another climate change-themed exhibition is not enough if, at the omnipresent post-event banquet, it’s a triumph of plastic bottles and cups. You see that there is no need to pile up an art collection, and to baptize it with great fanfare in the name of protection of human rights, demanding to obtain artworks on free loan of artists who live solely on their art. You see that smudging lipstick on your face just long enough for those infamous fifteen minutes of fame won't make you an artist with exquisite egalitarian sensibility. The original sin lies in believing that the extent of the commitment of a work of art can be calculated on the basis of an instant emotional impact, addressed only to the gut. That inspiration can be easily deduced from the news of the day. That engagement lies more in the title than in the strength of the work. And that portraying manneristically a human, social or political lack may be enough to declare themselves artists or, lost in delirium, artivists. To be honest, the very word "artivism" gives me an early onset of urticaria, because a poorly self-critical critics always falls victim to the same traps: in this case, the trap given by the lust for definition, for a kind of neologist hyper-baptism, from the moment that – as masterfully described by Camus in the previous excerpt – if it is art, it is already by its very nature a powerful commitment, and using human rights as a sycophantic pretext means to rape them, and to rape art itself. In my view, Judith beheading Holofernes (1612-13) by Artemisia Gentileschi is way more artivistic – or rather, artistic and therefore committed – than the umpteenth spread of red shoes placed in improbable venues of the contemporary; the Ecstasy of Blessed Ludovica Albertoni (1674) by Gian Lorenzo Bernini is much more artivistic – or rather, artistic and therefore committed – than yet another so-called performer who, by the mere fact of undressing himself, proclaims himself a revolutionary in front of an
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDUzNDc=