Like the skyscrapers in a tyrant's life, everything is exaggerated in scale, making the tyrant's dominion unshakable by expanding their world. This is why dictators have palaces, and why public sculptures, like palaces and skyscrapers, keep growing. The Egyptian pyramids are vast and complex for this reason. The colonizer adorns himself with grandeur, one of the many forms of exploitation, and this is also a disease triggered by fear—he is afflicted with a dimension disorder.
Anish Kapoor's sculpture, Cloud Gate, located in Millennium Park in Chicago, is one of the most well-known and perhaps most visited public sculptures in the world. This bean-shaped sculpture is about 20 meters long and made of stainless steel. Its entire convex surface is as reflective as a mirror. Visitors to Cloud Gate encounter distorted reflections of themselves due to the sculpture’s curved surface.
When you look at the skyline of Chicago, you see the skyscrapers of major corporations competing to reach the clouds. Some of these buildings have metallic, reflective surfaces similar to Cloud Gate. As skyscrapers strengthen with the metal engineering of the construction industry and reach towards the sky, people on the streets naturally appear smaller in proportion. Therefore, a person walking the streets of Chicago realizes their boundless smallness. Some of the rulers of the city and the world, with their massive representations made from concrete, steel, glass, brick, and mirrors, are there, reaching towards the sky, and people have to look ‘upwards’ to see them. Some of these skyscrapers, with pointed tops, resemble the ancient Egyptian pyramids. But what people see when they look up at the city is skyscrapers extending into the clouds, not the people who built the city. They are invisible. In this vista, the terrifying power of what is foreign to humans lies in its representations of power. They are those who build the visibility representing them, yet remain unseen.
These unseen colonizers are far removed from the mood and mode of existence of the people on the streets or those standing in front of Anish Kapoor's sculpture. They are well aware that their vast dominion, built through exploitation, is always under threat and thus requires methods or tools to protect and control the people on the streets.
Could one of these tools be an art object? In other words, could art be a very useful tool in the direct exploitation of societies?
What is the massive, mirrored bean in the city square, and why is it in this impressive city, one of America's major industrial centers? For instance, if this bean were only three centimeters tall and placed on a desk of one of the patrons, would it have the same power and effect? It is certain that such a small version would disappoint us and fail to attract our attention, and it would also be impossible for it to engage with the city's people. Therefore, it is correct to say that the sculpture's entire feature comes from its size, and this sculpture, like the giant skyscrapers in Chicago, talks with and to whom.
Like skyscrapers in the tyrant’s life, everything is exaggerated in size, expanding their world to make their dominance unshakable. This is why dictators have palaces, and why public sculptures, like palaces and skyscrapers, continue to grow. The Egyptian pyramids are vast and complex for this reason. The colonizer adorns himself with grandeur, one of the countless forms of exploitation, and this is also a disease triggered by fear—he is a dimension addict. Because of this nature, his way of understanding and perceiving reality is the same as that of animals. For animals, reality is proportional to size, so a very small creature in their world is not only not alive and real but doesn’t even exist. But what differentiates the colonizer from animals is the invisible, tight bond with the people he disregards. Therefore, the man sitting in his office with his head in the clouds has a close relationship with the people on the sidewalk looking up, and this relationship must be managed. Among those managing this arrangement are, of course, artists, along with soldiers, police, lawmakers, and industrial giants. The person walking on the street, reduced to just making a living, must continue their role in the system, serving without making a sound. This is why Anish Kapoor’s sculpture is there in the center of Chicago.
People in front of the bean also face the power of the city’s rulers, but additionally, like their reflections on the sculpture, they are both confronted by and within the colonizers. Just like their reflections on the sculpture, they are reconstructed through deconstruction, possessing a small part of the colonizer's magnificent presence and ego through their inclusion in this mirror of the square. Their reflections, like those on the sculpture, are aligned with the colonizer, neutralized by the feeling of being part of a common ego.
There they are, on the tyrant's large body and as part of it, facing their own distorted reflection, unaware that they are losing once again due to their indirect contact with the tyrant’s body (system). Almost everything given to them, appearing as an opportunity, is also the main cause of their enslavement.
Anish Kapoor, the artist who placed the Cloud Gate object in the city square, is known as one of the most famous artists worldwide. Similarly, there is a statement declaring Osama Bin Laden, who killed three thousand people with his attack on the Twin Towers, as a world-renowned artist. Furthermore, this declaration was made by other Western artists. They claimed that Laden’s destruction was the greatest artwork in the cosmos, and he himself was the greatest artist in the cosmos. If thought of like this, Laden’s magnificent installation would render all of world art to be insignificant, and certainly, sculptures like Cloud Gate would also be part of this insignificance. This horrifying statement was also included by a writer from the Occidentalist Turkish art community in their own book.
Are Laden’s destruction and Cloud Gate truly such opposing objects, or is there a relationship between them? If there is a relationship, how close or distant is it? Is it possible to place them completely separately or together?
We might update our question and ask: What are the things that separate and also connect Anish Kapoor’s sculpture in Chicago's city square from the statues of slave traders in city squares?
Certainly, many artists would want their work to be placed in a city square like Chicago. Artists do not question themselves with ethics in this regard. Such sculptures are erected daily, and many artists make a living from public sculptures. These objects are commissioned by states, municipalities, companies, or similar institutions. On the other hand, statues of slave traders are taken down from the squares and destroyed; they are thrown into rivers and dumps.
Most artists strive to exist within the art industry at any cost, doing everything they can for this. They continue to erect sculptures as extensions of colonialism on the streets, and while these objects represent colonizers in many ways, the principle of art's inviolability no longer allows them to exempt themselves from ethics and law.
On the other hand, following the brutal killing of George Floyd by a police officer in America, black people and their supporters, who rose up, are toppling, destroying, and dismantling the statues of slave traders on the streets. Representations of shameful history are being toppled and shattered in squares and thrown into rivers and dumps. The effects of these actions will undoubtedly reach the heart of museums and galleries, questioning both art and artists.
It is important to immediately note that fascist statues, statues of slave traders, are not being toppled by artists. These statues are being toppled by the oppressed, marginalized, racially discriminated people, and those who rose up after George Floyd was killed by a police officer. It is very important that these statues are being toppled by people in front of Anish Kapoor’s mirror.
Colonizers have always used art and architecture while building their systems over societies, and this is evident. They commission artists to create statues that represent their power, erecting them over the people, and teaching artists the inviolability and sanctity of these statues first. We know this from the idols representing Turkish Kemalism in public spaces, especially in city squares.
Colonizers who exploit everything for their own service, using and enslaving people, have always used artists in building this exploitative system. The primary purpose of statues and busts in city squares or universities is to perpetuate the power’s own exploitative system, not art. The inviolability granted to these objects is not the inviolability of art but that of the colonizer. Art that has played this role for power and been nourished by it cannot be naturally independent. Therefore, such art or artist is entirely deprived of the ability to question the colonizer. No one waiting to be exhibited in a museum spits on the curator.
The monopoly of art by colonial great capital and the functioning of museums, galleries, and other art institutions as tools of this capital normalize and promote mediocrity and evil in art, while always keeping the art of the ‘other’ suffocating. Although we cannot say that the recent uprising has begun to exclude this entire paradigm, we can say that it marks the beginning of a new era. By starting to topple statues representing colonizers, we certainly see that they are made visible again by linking them to their true meanings, which is very important in this context. This visibility, while difficult to encompass all its components and taking time, is a new visibility and perspective that can lead to reinterpreting and questioning all representational objects with traces of colonizers in places like public squares, museums, and galleries. The magnificent mediocrity and evil of art are now globally unsettled.
The objects of fascism, which remained under the protection of both the powers and, by extension, art, without disturbing their comfort, are no longer just the concern of the powers and art. These objects, stripped of the 'artistic mask' that made them visible and protected only to themselves and the art world under the protection of the rulers, have been made visible in their most naked form by the oppressed themselves, both to themselves and to the entire world. They have also awakened the slumbering idols of a period of sleep, disturbing their comfort, and are now shattering them in the squares.
