On Tuesday, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York cancelled a planned exhibition of artworks created in recent months in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement, after objections from a number of the artists whose work was to have been included in the show. The exhibition, titled ‘Collective Actions: Artist Interventions in a Time of Change’, was to feature works, many of which were made by black artists, that had been sold as low-cost editions to raise funds for mutual aid or distributed freely to promote social justice causes. A number of the artists criticised the Whitney for neither seeking consent for the inclusion of their works nor offering compensation for their display, as well as for the manner in which the museum had made acquisitions.
Once a place where sea, desert, and palm groves coexisted in rare harmony, Tunisia’s Gabès Oasis stands today as one of the world’s most fragile cultural-environmental sites. At its heart is artist Mohamed Amine Hamouda, whose ecological practice offers a form of resistance—one built on memory, materials, and a return to ancestral knowledge.