<\/p>\n
Damien Hirst has been dogged by accusations of plagiarism and appropriation for most of his decades-long career, most notably for his \u201cFor the Love of God\u201d diamond-encrusted skull.
\nWeeks after Hirst\u2019s work went on sale for $80 million in 2007, the artist John Le Kay claimed Hirst got the idea from a skull Le Kay covered in crystals back in 1993. But Hirst was accused of a different kind of theft at the Venice Biennale this week, one that often carries charges of racial insensitivity and imperialism: cultural appropriation.<\/p>\n
Nigerian artist Victor Ehikhamenor, whose work is also on display at the Bienniale, has claimed Hirst\u2019s \u201cGolden Heads (Female)\u201d sculpture too-closely resembles a famous 14th century Nigerian artwork without adequately explaining the original\u2019s significance.
\nEhikhamenor called out Hirst on Instagram for visually appropriating the iconic 14th century brass \u201cIfe Head\u201d\u2014believed to depict a king of the Yoruba people in the ancient Ife region of West Africa (today\u2019s Nigeria)\u2014and negating its historical context.
\n\u201cFor the thousands of viewers seeing this for the first time, they won\u2019t think Ife, they won\u2019t think Nigeria,\u201d Ehikhamenor wrote in the caption of his Instagram post.
\nHe also argued that the text accompanying Hirst\u2019s sculpture, which references Ife within Hirst\u2019s fictional tale about his own sculpture\u2019s origins, is insufficient and will be glossed over by Bienniale visitors: \u201cTheir young ones will grow up to know this work as Damien Hirst\u2019s. As time passes it will pass for a Damien Hirst regardless of his small print caption. The narrative will shift and the young Ife or Nigerian contemporary artist will someday be told by a long nose critic \u2018Your work reminds me of Damien Hirst\u2019s Golden Head\u2019. We need more biographers for our forgotten.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a subsequent interview with the Huffington Post, Ehikhamenor maintained that Hirst\u2019s work had imperialist overtones: by appropriating Ife imagery, Hirst\u2019s sculpture echoed the literal theft of original Nigerian artworks by British colonists. \u201cIt borders on the line of broad daylight robbery,\u201d Ehikhamenor said. \u201cOne must also be mindful of the past relationship Nigeria has with Britain in regards to carting away some of our best works during the Benin punitive expedition of 1897.\u201d
\nHirst is the second contemporary artist to be accused of cultural appropriation at a prominent exhibition in the past few months. Charges of racial exploitation and cultural theft were recently leveled at Dana Schutz for her painting of Emmett Till, an African-American teenager who was lynched to death in the 1955, currently on view at the Whitney Biennial in New York City.<\/p>\n
People protested the painting in person when the exhibition opened in late March, and dozens of artists signed a petition calling for its removal and destruction.
\nDebates around cultural appropriation are part of a renewed cultural conversation about racism and colonialism in Western cultures. In 2015, M.I.A., the British-Sri Lankan rapper, had to fight to have a music video released because\u2014she claimed in a series of tweets\u2014it was filmed in Africa and was considered cultural appropriation.
\nThe artist Azealia Banks responded with her own tweet that M.I.A. shouldn\u2019t be accused of cultural theft because \u201call brown and black people share the same global plight.\u201d
\nBut insisting that cultures cannot borrow from one another enforces a new kind of racial or cultural purity. It\u2019s one thing to be mindful and considerate; it\u2019s another to insist that, regardless of their intentions, white artists who incorporate history or stories from other cultures or races in their work are reinforcing racism and imperialism.<\/p>\n
Indeed, it\u2019s hard to believe that Hirst hasn\u2019t been accused of cultural appropriation until now. In all the controversy and charges of idea theft surrounding his \u201cFor the Love of God\u201d skull, there was no mention of the work\u2019s most obvious influence: Mexican culture, specifically the skull imagery celebrated throughout the country during its \u201cDay of the Dead\u201d holiday.<\/p>\n
Had Hirst created the work a few years later, he would have no doubt been accused of cultural appropriation for that\u2014and his \u201cGolden Heads (Female)\u201d sculpture would have made him a repeat offender when it comes to exploiting other cultures for personal gain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Damien Hirst has been dogged by accusations of plagiarism and appropriation for most of his decades-long career, most notably for his \u201cFor the Love of God\u201d diamond-encrusted skull. Weeks after Hirst\u2019s work went on sale for $80 million in 2007, the artist John Le Kay claimed Hirst got the idea from a skull Le […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":188,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture-and-art","category-head-lines"],"yoast_head":"\n