Victor Kégli

Installation

wooden fence, leafshed, smokemachine, fictitious south american nativs

1995

The more endangered the merrier. Victor Kéglis “Ein Yano im Busch”

Europe just eats up bush people. And so Victor Kégli’s contribution to Luxembourg’s “Festival of All Cultures” comes across as indifferent and pessimistic in equal measure. Viewers who peep through the slats of a barrier stretching through the woods are bound to be disappointed. Instead of spying Yanomami Indians flown in specially as featured attractions for the culture show, one can see nothing more than the a column of smoke ascending out of a straw hut through a chimney known as a Yano. A card fastened to a small sign resembles the informative descriptions offered in a zoo. However, this card presents the “territory” of the exhibit along with other pseudo-information. Thus we learn that there are only a small number of the specimen exhibited to be found anywhere in the world. One must suddenly conclude that the exotic visitor on exhibit unfortunately evades our gaze at precisely this moment. No doubt he has retreated to the inner sanctity of his hearth fire. The artist laughs ambivalently, “The tree frog is presently sitting behind a leaf,” he says to those who so anxiously peer through the slats in vain. Furthermore: “People think the Indians are the subject at hand. Actually, the Yanomami as such are not my interest. They simply provide a means, a symbol, for me to express what I have to say. With this “Festival of All Cultures,” Europe is really only celebrating itself. That is what I hope to reveal. My subject is European culture.” This European culture also has the tendency to absorb “exotic” cultures, partly through an affinity to individual aspects of culture, but also partly through the strong attraction which Western culture exerts on other peoples. Kégli confronts these issues when his work reminds of the way peoples were put on display near the end of the nineteenth century.

For fans or spectators of the exotic, the Yanomami Indians play the role of a sort of pet people among cultures facing extinction. This role is similar to that of panda bears for environmentalists. Kégli asserts, “In this exchange, the particular culture displayed does not really matter. It need not be more compatible to Western interests than other cultures. It is simply a novelty that draws our attention for no other specific or explicable reasons.” The cultures which were “discovered” by ethnologists in the sixties have all but disappeared from the radar screen of today. The prominent feature of such cultures seems to be their tendency to shrink: sublimated, razed, subsumed into the attraction of Western culture. According to Kégli, when it comes to the consumerist promises offered, familiar images and water faucets are on equal footing: “Those are the things we prefer not to see. When we look to native peoples at one with their environments we would rather see them decked out in buck skin which they tanned with their own spittle.”

Victor Kégli should, however, not be confused with artists who pontificate and broadcast some message (which in Kégli’s case is always political or at least referring to controversies involving social issues) scowling down at us with criticism and disdain from on high. He never demands that we stare our own limitations in the eye. At the same time, he also does not offer work which an elite art audience can quickly scan and check off as comfortable confirmation of their own connoisseurship. He does not calmly hum along with a well-known aesthetic discourse. Just the opposite: He retreats from unambiguous answers. Without preaching or selling, Kégli proposes that the truth of the matter remains coyly hidden with the Indians in the bush. The artist assumes the mischievous role of a prankster offering riddles somewhere in the gray area between probability and improbability. To further stir up uncertainty, the artist published news clips containing interviews with the presumed guests from the rain forest. (“Nice place, but a bit on the cold side,” comments one of the natives.) These serve as tidings emanating from the smoke escaping the Yano. The source goes back to the fire where the naked aborigines huddle for warmth.

Kégli obviously runs the risk that his work will not be “understood.” What does that mean? But then, he is not looking for a single, true viewpoint. Instead, he tends to exposing his own musings while holding back the reassurance of a satisfying solution to the issues he raises. He strives for his own means of expression which serves as a focal point where various facets of these issues may converge. He is open for associations and links; With this approach the work of the artist is just another log on the fire of a public discussion. The artist welcomes precisely such an incendiary reaction. And he is not even interested in extinguishing the flames when he is attacked, as when, for example, he is criticized for abusing these simple native peoples by putting them on display. He does not simply allow his audience to politely chat about the poor Yanomami freezing in the woods of Luxembourg for a minimum wage. Rather, he himself schedules a press conference at which representatives of human rights organizations can hold forth about Yanomami Indians. “Each visitor has to make the jump to reflection for him or herself. Anyone really paying attention will get it. They will arrive at what I am trying to reveal. Everyone can experience it him or herself: What it is like to stand at a fence in the woods and look through a slit in order to catch a glimpse of some members of a foreign culture.” The artist cannot and in fact does not want to exclude himself from this process: “I am part of this European culture which absorbs other cultures. I cannot stand above these people who come to see the Indians. I was simply trying to find my own contribution to the given motto of the Festival of All Cultures. ”

Meaning leaves a smoky trail in the wilderness. It grows thicker and thicker around a wooden fence. The chimney of rounded form of the Yano… (Tanja Schwarz)