Although entirely different in terms of approach, rationale and form, Blum and Rabah’s works sparked a dialogue on the deceptive nature of imitation, the role of the museum versus the exhibition of art, the validity of historical interpretation, the responsibility of the artist to adhere to fact and the level of truth afforded by myth.
Rising up through the floors of the Deniz Palas apartments was Rabah’s The Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Humankind. To all extents and purposes, Rabah’s museum, which is installed on each occasion of exhibition according to site and context, presents a selection of artefacts in vitrines and display cabinets. The layout mimics that of a traditional museum; in this particular installation, a ticket desk led to a main entrance followed by a run of topological installations that terminated in a research area and a café. Belief in the authenticity of the works on display, as an officially endorsed collection, falters when it is understood that the museum’s entire contents were crafted by Rabah from olive trees, the universal symbol of peace and a clear reference to the effects of war on Palestinian agriculture, economy, and identity. Each object in the displays was fashioned from the olive’s bark and ash and secondary products such as soap and oil.
Does an archive that, for example, presents a lump of olive coal as a meteorite or cross-sections of tree trunks as delicate countdowns to the extinction of geographical borders, make Rabah’s museum less “real” than any other art museum? Is it, perhaps, that a work of art cannot pronounce itself as two entities presented in tension— art as a form of personal, conscious production and the museum, a supposedly objective place devoted to the acquisition, conservation, study and exhibition of objects that have some scientific, historic or artistic value—at the same time?
For Rabah, his museum’s research and reading room provided a threshold to a dual reality. He described it as a space “not yet resolved, and where function becomes obscure”— a space for people to do their own thing and reflect on the museum’s leftovers and the factual remains of its very existence. While the rest of his museum can be confronted as art, in the research and reading room, Rabah renders both terms—“art” and “museum”— ambiguous.
On the next floor of the Deniz Palas building was Michael Blum’s recreation of an apartment lived in by Ataturk’s lover Safiye Behar. Presented as a preserved house/museum, wall panels hung at its entrance describing the history of the couple’s relationship and personal facts and anecdotes about the Jewish feminist Behar, like her fascination with Marxism..(it seemed important to the work that he made her a Jewess in Turkey) Within the reception room were vitrines containing letters, photographs, personal possessions; in the parlour, a videotaped interview with Behar’s grandson seemingly validated the tale of Ataturk and Behar’s tryst. The rest of the apartment appeared as if left by the owner—furniture and personal trinkets intact—but separated from the audience by a glass barrier..
A Tribute to Safiye Behar again exploited a form of display that mimicked that of a museum, but this time, the collection of artefacts were not presented as representing facts of history or science as in Rabah’s installation; they instead collectively proposed the possibility of an imagined history—a history that might have been. The tale of Behar is, of course, a construction albeit one that Blum never admits and the use of the museum format a device. Yet, ultimately, the work was the presentation of an original idea and hence, as with Rabah’s The Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Humankind, it is the sincerity of the artists’ perspective that registers the work as “real.”
So, why is it that disillusionment arises over whether the subject of a work of art is based on a “true story,” or, similarly, over the factual description of one’s own work? Is this a symptom of a growing paranoia in the art world about quality control or false advertising, a sign that we, as an audience, are becoming apprehensive of the ambiguousness of the ingredients that make up a work of art? The sincerity of artistic statements should be more than enough to validate a work of art. There is no need for a film-like credit, tag or an authoritative endorsement to label artistic intent as ”sincere.” An artist cannot be labelled dishonest for avoiding categorisation or for leaving their work, as in Blum’s case, as open to interpretation as written history.
It is interesting to note that visitors who responded to both works in a negative way—those that queried their status as “real”— appeared to feel cheated somehow, as if they were told a secret that was later negated, stolen or shared too easily with everyone else. Perhaps the need to ask whether art is “real” is simply a reflection of the childish desire to cling to the belief that a museum should hold authority over its audience. In their particular form of intimacy, museums supposedly insure that some kind of new “truth” will be discovered. In both Blum and Rabah’s works, it is the personal process of discovery that forms/structures the work's literal existence. The question, therefore, of whether “it is real” is also a symptom of the confusion and apprehension that results when confronted by a museum that lacks an institutional stamp of responsibility. Who can the audience turn to, in this case, to get the ultimate, factual and uncontested answer that they normally do not feel the urge to question? They can only turn to themselves.
