Sculptor and installation artist Joseph Sassoon Semah (Baghdad, 1948) was not lucky with corona. Due to lockdowns, a major ten-month exhibition in the Kunstmuseum The Hague largely closed last year. And two exhibitions in Amsterdam, the city where he has lived and worked since 1980, have been disrupted this month due to the current health measures. Which is closed in the Goethe-Institut, which is postponed in its gallery Lumen Travo.
How are you?
“Very well. Together with my wife, curator Linda Bouws, I am continuing to work on On Friendship. This is a large and complex research project on the German artist Joseph Beuys. Last year, and also this year, his hundredth year of birth would be celebrated internationally. It seemed to me a good reason to critically examine his work and ideas. That doesn’t happen often.
„Beuys mythologised his war past as a National Socialist. After the war he transformed from perpetrator to victim. With installations, lectures and publications I investigate who Beuys really was, how art and politics relate in his work, what is myth and what is reality. I can continue working on that despite the lockdown. I’m having a good time.”
What’s going well, what’s not?
“Due to the lockdown, museums are closed and all kinds of things are cancelled, such as the exhibition planned for this month in my gallery. No, I don’t really get mad or sad about that. What can I do about it? I just keep going.”
What is your biggest concern right now?
“Oh, I can’t complain. 2021 was a very good year for me. Despite everything, my exhibition at the Kunstmuseum has still been open for a month and I have published a book. Not all artists can do what I do, and move exhibitions and work on texts when everything is forced to close.
“I have colleagues who have spent years preparing one exhibition. If it doesn’t go through due to corona, that’s a drama. Just as much as the current situation is disastrous for most musicians and many other artists.”
What do you need to make 2022 better than 2021?
“I hope that we gain more control over the world and that the Zoom era comes to an end soon. I don’t like talking to people on a computer. I long to be able to have a conversation close to each other again, over a cup of coffee.
“No, corona has not had a direct influence on my work. At most, my work process has changed somewhat as a result. The lesson from all this? Being depressed or bitter about the current situation doesn’t help. But hey, everyone has to be strong in his or her own way.”
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