Jonas Staal

Staal does not shy away from controversy, and his work has regularly sparked public debate. In one example, he declared a lawsuit brought against him by far-right politician Geert Wilders a performative work of art (De Geert Wilders Werken, 2005-2008) and researched a model prison designed by Wilders’ fellow party member Fleur Agema (Gesloten Architectuur, 2011). 

In 2012, he founded the New World Summit, an artistic and political organisation through which he creates temporary parliaments in art institutions, theatres and public spaces, bringing together stateless states and organisations blacklisted as 'terrorist' to discuss alternative models of democracy. Based on these projects, the autonomous Democratic Self-Government of Rojava in northern Syria commissioned him to construct a new public and permanent people's parliament in this stateless Kurdish region, finalised in 2018. 

Staal’s penetrating images force us to think but he also initiates collaborations between artists and emancipatory political parties and movements. He argues that artists must take not only an aesthetic but also a political stand: creating a new world involves uniting the imagination of art with the imagination of politics. In that light, he investigated the relationship between art and propaganda in the 21st century at Leiden University, where he obtained his PhD in 2018. 

'In our democracy, as an artist you are allowed to break through all of the taboos and question everything but not change anything. When, like me, you advocate political change you’re called an 'activist' or, worse, a 'propagandist'. For a long time, artists have been told: Sois belle et tais-toi – Shut up and be pretty. Those days are definitely over as far as I am concerned.' - Jonas Staal