The act of refusal, in the context of art making and the exhibition are not new topics within the history of political and aesthetic critique in the art world. For example, in the early 1930s, Marcel Duchamp quit making art in an effort to pursue a profession of chess playing, which he likened to being as much, if not more of an art form than something like painting. Duchamp, it was discovered, had continued to make work in secret, until the end of his career. Lee Lozano is also famous for an act of refusal—her Drop Out Piece, in which she paradoxically conducted a performance for the remainder of her life: not making art. However, the refusal we have been reading about and discussing in class takes on a different form of critique. Artists in question are not ending their professional lives as artists, are not rejecting art making, but rather rejecting participation in exhibitions within sites that display explicit opposition to said artists’ political ideologies. The temporalities of these acts as well as what might be at stake for both artist and institution are distinct from older models. While the earlier models are perhaps less explicitly political and more philosophical, and are considered works in themselves, the later might be considered explicitly political and ethical in nature.

            The contemporary forms we see are not unfamiliar ones—that of the group petition/boycott, as seen at both Manifesta and the exhibition Living as Form. The artists in question are using a power-in-numbers mentality, one that has effectively generated dialogue surrounding the politics and ethics of specific political spaces: in this case Russia and Israel. A number of artists involved in both exhibitions chose to retract participation in their respective exhibitions in order to protest unethical human rights policies. Joanna Warsza points out some problems with these forms in her interview with Nato Thompson, “…we should ask some questions: What is the nature of this boycott—not going to Russia because of the anti-LGBT laws? What do you achieve exactly when you click the “I am not going” button? Do you think you are supporting the LGBTQ organizations here? Or do you rather care about raising awareness? If so, what do you accomplish through isolation?” In response to her own question, she answers, “Boycotts make institutions more sensitive, more vulnerable and more apt to change… So I would consider the boycotts as a form of mobilization, not a form of quitting.”

            In these later models of refusal one can see that art making itself is not in question, rather, the conditions/context of exhibiting art, art’s relationship to the institution and the state. I tend to agree with Warsza’s argument concerning the effectiveness of the Manifesta boycott. When it comes to having an actual effect on the citizens of a country with questionable ethics, it seems that the participation of subversive works has much more potential for radicality, generation of social change, and potential meaning for the audience. The gesture of boycott problematically refuses engagement with an audience (those who would have potentially less privilege to disengage than the artists in question), instead reacts a more impersonal, institutional apparatus.