Goshka Macuga’s current installation ‘The Nature of The Beast’

This installation bombards you: with different art forms, different media types, different questions, all of which force you to use our own discretion as opposed to kitsch art where you just absorb whatever propaganda it feeds you. Yet despite this, it does not hit you: unlike a viewer of Guernica, one is not shocked into a revelation but encouraged to think and learn and discuss the numerous ideas presented. It is a cumulative process of exchange and dialogue, durational rather than immediate. Avant-Garde art aimed to shock people out of their objective, positivist view of the world and become more sensitive and human. But Macuga seems to ask whether it is possible for art to reclaim a less violent relationship with the viewer whilst maintaining its power to broaden his/her mind.

Like Cubism, however, its archival nature brings together heterogeneous elements to emphasise their proximity rather than their difference. For example, Macuga essentially equates fascism and the bombing of Guernica with America’s invasion of Iraq. But the links are never that simple, or two-dimensional. They build up like the layers of a collage, made up of different mediums and historical figures: you find out that the tapestry was covered by Colin Powell at the U.N when he declared war on Iraq, which had been put their by Nelson Rockafella as a deterrent to war (who in turn had destroyed Diego Rivera’s painting as it included a portrait of Lenin), and the tapestry was a copy of the original by Picasso against fascism, which was very useful to Clement Atlee’s campaign and was claimed by Franco after Picasso died, despite his last will and testament. As you can see, layers are constantly stuck on and peeled off people’s mouths as they try to fight their corner. It seems then that the nations are not united, but fractured, like the installation itself.

So in this sense, the exhibition is a paradoxical experience. The emotional aspect of war is both freed and covered up in a rather kaleidoscopic manner: art and dialogue might reveal the true nature of the beast, particularly the documentary that airs the views of disillusioned soldiers, but does it help in stopping it? After all, these soldiers go on fighting. I guess it is slightly encouraging that when Colin Powell tried to destroy the link between art and dialogue, for the sake of war, his actions backfired, merely adding to the anti-war discussion. But is this enough? I think if anything, the exhibition’s location in Whitechapel, where the original Guernica had rallied so much support, seems to call for ‘the good old days’ when art brought society together as a force against tyranny. Perhaps Macuga's aim is to rebuild the social links that have disappeared in modern society.