The Fondazione Prada is exhibiting an installation by Christoph Büchel, titled “Monte di Pietà,” “Pawnshop” in English, which, according to the institution dedicated to contemporary art and culture, “is a deep dive into the notion of debt as the root of human society and the primary vehicle by which political and cultural power is exercised.”
The installation in Venice includes documents, historical and contemporary artworks related to property history, credit and finance. Among these are previously classified British government documents relating to war bonds loaned to the then-Mandate of Palestine, two bags of cement with Hebrew writing on them amid mangled concrete, and a monitor displaying images of the Gaza and Lebanese borders, as well as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Behind the monitor is a postcard in Hebrew with Lord Arthur Balfour’s head, and the November date in which the Balfour declaration was signed.
The Brussels-based European Jewish Association, which represents hundreds of Jewish communities across the continent, and which is actively engaged in combating antisemitism, was made aware of the content by numerous sources—all Jewish—who felt that the exhibition had all the hallmarks of antisemitism and rehashed tropes of powerful Jews, and that the concrete suggested that Israel was profiting from destruction.
According to the EJA, those who saw the exhibition also felt that that the war bonds documents and the Balfour postcard suggested the exhibition sought to characterize the creation of the State of Israel as a sordid, secret and financial matter.
“The parts of this installation that bring Israel into focus are clearly suggesting that Jews and Israelis have the money and the power, and that any wars whether in Gaza, Lebanon or in the creation of the State of Israel have all been to the Jewish financial interest,” Rabbi Menachem Margolin, chairman of the European Jewish Association, said in a statement on Friday.
“This installation, however subtle it may try to be, is simply rehashing some of the oldest antisemitic tropes. What makes this particular installation even more sinister is that it attempts to wrap these tropes under the mantle of “art,” for people to stop and consider and ponder. It seeks to convey an idea that is antisemitic at its very root, in the same one that one stops and absorbs a famous painting,” Margolin said.
“This is extremely dangerous and irresponsible given the record rises of antisemitism as a result of the October 7 massacre and the ongoing war in Gaza,’’ he stressed.
“I cannot understand how the Fondazione Prada failed to see the clear antisemitic tropes on display in this installation. Whether they did or did not is neither here nor there: Every Jew and Israeli who saw the installation knew exactly what it was conveying because we have seen it throughout our history,’’ he added.
Margolin called on the Fondazione Prada to remove all of the elements of this installation. “Linking the themes of money and power to Jews and Israel is pure antisemitism, however artful it professes to be,” he said.
Originally published by the European Jewish Press.
