MONOCULTURE | A Recent History

Public Movement is a group working with performance who consider the relationship between state power and the sphere of art, exploring structures and ideologies that translate into institutional and cultural policies. Their project National Collection took the form of participatory tours. These performances were presented over several weeks at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in 2015, whose original site was where Israel's 1948 Declaration of Independence ceremony took place. Questioning the relations between national and cultural identity, the central idea was to revisit the performativity of the foundational moment of a nation state, and the embodiment of nationalistic ideals in newly formed cultural institutions. Their work for the MONOCULTURE exhibition offers a continuation of this project, considering the museum as a civic space where the experience of art can act as a reflection of cultural heritage. Resembling foundational plaques at the entrance to the museum, it bears the legend “Imagine this museum is a country and in this country there is a museum”. This curious feedback loop evokes the cyclical relations between culture and politics.