Mumbai-based author and curator Ranjit Hoskoté has resigned from the six-person committee accountable for appointing Documenta’s subsequent inventive director after he was accused of “anti-semitism” for signing a petition likening Zionism to Hindutva (Hindu nationalism) in 2019.
Following German information outlet Süddeutsche Zeitung‘s November 9 report of Hoskoté’s petition signing, tradition minister Claudia Roth of Germany’s Green Party rapidly decried the petition as “clearly anti-semitic” and threatened to withdraw funding from the worldwide artwork exhibition.
The petition Hoskoté had signed, titled “Statement Against Consulate General of Israel, Mumbai Event on Hindutva and Zionism,” was penned by the Indian chapter of the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) motion in protest of an event with a right-wing Israeli speaker on the University of Mumbai. In May 2019, the German Parliament designated the BDS movement as antisemitic, and pledged to de-platform and reduce funds to organizations that actively help the motion or “question Israel’s right to exist.”
The petition mentioned that Zionism is a “racist ideology calling for a settler-colonial, apartheid state the place non-Jews have unequal rights, and in follow, has been premised on the ethnic cleaning of Palestinians for the final seven a long time,” mirrored by the “supremacist ideology” of Hindutva, which calls for a nation of Hindus by comparable means.
In his resignation letter, later printed in e-flux, Hoskoté denounced the “monstrous charge of anti-Semitism” towards him and mentioned he was “subjected to the proceedings of a kangaroo court.”
“It is clear to me that there is no room, in this toxic atmosphere, for a nuanced discussion of the issues at stake,” Hoskoté wrote in his November 12 letter. “And now — in what strikes me as a doomed attempt to save a situation that is beyond saving — I am being asked to accept a sweeping and untenable definition of anti-Semitism that conflates the Jewish people with the Israeli state; and that, correspondingly, misrepresents any expression of sympathy with the Palestinian people as support for Hamas.”
Documenta’s Managing Director Andreas Hoffmann welcomed Hoskoté’s resignation, calling it “logical and respectable.” In a November 9 assertion, Documenta additionally added that “it was an essential requirement of the shareholders that the Finding Committee should have no BDS affiliations, and this was explicitly conveyed to the former Artistic Directors entrusted with the task of setting up the Finding Committee.” Documenta’s subsequent version is slated to open in 2027.
Another member of the discovering committee, Israeli artist Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger, has also resigned from her publish this week, citing her lack of ability to contribute on the scheduled pace in gentle of “the situation in the Middle East.”
This all follows an particularly contentious 15th version of Documenta in 2022, all through which the competition’s curatorial crew, the Indonesian collective Ruangrupa, battled antisemitism allegations made by the German media and pro-Israel teams. Last month, Documenta publicly condemned two members of Ruangrupa for liking pro-Palestinian rally posts on Instagram days after the unprecedented Hamas assault on Israeli residents.
“I have dedicated my life to opposing authoritarian forces and discriminatory ideologies, and my signature carried with it the weight of my commitment to dialogue, inclusiveness, mutuality, and the ceaseless quest for common ground,” Hoskoté concluded his resignation letter. “This commitment remains with me, as the cornerstone of my life.”