Hamburg art centre condemns ‘politically motivated vandalism’ of art installation referencing Palestine

The Kunstverein in Hamburg has said it “unequivocally condemn[s]” the defacement of an installation it is exhibiting by the artist Phoebe Collings-James that references Palestine. The art centre described the incident, which took place in November, as an act of “politically motivated vandalism” and said it is currently being investigated by authorities as a hate crime.

The Kunstverein, which belongs to the second oldest art association in Germany, said in a statement on Instagram that “an unknown visitor chose to deliberately deface a section of the installation in which the word Palestine appeared” alongside a list of other regions affected by conflict. The names of the other locations— Congo, Sudan and Haiti—were left untouched.

The piece, titled red earth, blood earth, blood brother earth [kick dirt] (2024), is a site-specific work featured in the institution’s exhibition In and Out of Place. Land after Information 1992–2024. The show is described by the gallery as engaging “with the enduring legacy of colonialism… through intricate drawings and writings rendered in clay slip on the gallery floor”, and Collings-James’s installation references the 1939 poem Return to My Native Land by the Martinique-born poet Aimé Césaire.

Collings-James is a London-based artist and DJ working primarily with ceramics, whose practice deals with themes of colonialism and the African diaspora. Her caption for the installation on Instagram included the words “Free Palestine. Liberation self determination freedom.”

Significant tensions have emerged in the German art world since Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 and the Israeli bombardment that has followed. Politicians in the federal republic of Germany define support for Israel’s security as its “reason of state”, and a number of exhibitions at German museums have been cancelled due to comments by participating artists or curators being perceived as antisemitic or anti-Israel. In response to this, in January 2024 the Strike Germany campaign called on “international cultural workers to strike from German cultural institutions” due to their “use of McCarthyist policies that suppress freedom of expression, specifically expressions of solidarity with Palestine”.

The artist Zoë Claire Miller called the vandalism, in a post on X, “iconoclastic violence”. Fellow artist Adam Broomberg, meanwhile, says to The Art Newspaper that he feels it is “reassuring that the institution is taking this seriously and being supportive… In the last two-and-a-half years there has been a concerted effort to remove artists, intellectuals and academics who show solidarity with the Palestinian cause.” He adds that “over 200 artists and journalists have been censored or fired’, citing crowd-sourced research published by the platform Archive of Silence.

The Art Newspaper contacted Collings-James for comment.