Challenging the Art World: Critique, Activism, and the Military-Industrial Nexus
During Performative05, an art event involving different artists and organized by the MAXXI museum in L’Aquila, the Italian artist Sara Leghissa turned her performance into a powerful statement. While many artists participate in such events to showcase their work or explore aesthetic concepts, Leghissa used her invitation as a platform for a critical interrogation of the art world itself. Her initial hesitation about whether to attend or not, turned into the decision to create a moment of public denunciation of the cultural institutions of her country and their entanglement with the arms industry.
Leghissa used in fact the poster space to showcase sentences that explicitly exposed the connections between the art system and military-industrial interests, drawing attention to a troubling nexus of culture, commerce, and violence. At the center of her critique was Rome’s MAXXI museum, which she accused of complicity in the ongoing violence in Palestine. According to Leghissa, one of the museum’s recent exhibitions was developed in collaboration with the cultural foundation of an Italian arms manufacturer, a partnership that effectively tied the institution to the interests of the defense industry.
The criticized exhibition is the one titled Mediterranea. Visions of an ancient and complex sea, that was made in fact possible with the contribution of the Med-Or Foundation, created by Leonardo S.p.A., the Italian company that produces military equipment, aerospace technologies, satellites, and security systems. Along with it, MAXXI collaborated also with the Italian Space Agency (ASI) and the European Space Agency (ESA), which provided satellite images and data; the technological partners were Telespazio (a joint venture between Leonardo and Thales, a satellite services company) and e-GEOS (a company specialized in earth observation).
The museum’s collaboration with a weapons producer constitutes a form of art washing, a term used to describe the way corporations take advantage of culture to improve their public image; and, even worse, by engaging with a foundation tied to military production, institutions risk normalizing or even supporting practices that result in human suffering. In this specific case, Sara Leghissa accused MAXXI of supporting the systemic violence against Palestinians, because some of the military equipment used in the war are produced precisely by Leonardo SpA and the other partners. “The exhibition Mediterranea. Visions of an ancient and complex sea is directly involved in the genocide of Palestinian people”; “The MAXXI museum is partner with Leonardo SpA, Agenzia Spaziale Italiana and e-Geos, directly involved in the genocide of Palestinian people”; “The entire infrastructure system in Palestine is demolished. Hospitals, schools, universities, libraries. Is this legal?”: these are some of the sentences with which Leghissa made her powerful accusation statement, and the photos of her performance can be viewed on her social account, but not on the account of the museum, that instead posted photos and videos of the other artists that performed during the event. And what’s more, by reading some comments on the social networks, some people that witnessed the performance said that later the same day, a van was parked exactly in front of the posters, as someone wanted them to be hidden.
Sara Leghissa performance at Maxxi Museum L'Aquila
Museums responsibility in our contemporary era
Moreover, this situation carries another implication: visitors may be unaware of these connections and could inadvertently become accomplices in benefiting entities that profit from armed conflicts. This case can in fact make us reflect on the responsibility of cultural institutions in an era of globalization and corporate sponsorship: the intersection between art, private companies and politics, increases in fact the risk of compromising museum’s values, a type of institution that should represent a place where the public encounters art and culture, and not a place of ambiguous relations. Moreover, Leghissa’s critique is a warning that such relations can have real life (and very serious) consequences, and it’s also a call to vigilance: to engage with culture critically, to ask who benefits from the art we consume, and to consider the ethical implications.
Sara Leghissa performance at Maxxi Museum L'Aquila
The boundaries between art, moral and politics
In the end, Sara Leghissa’s performance during Performative05 was more than an artistic gesture: it was an act of moral accountability. By publicly denouncing the connections between MAXXI and the military equipment industry, she challenged cultural institutions and the public to reflect on the role of art in society. Her critique leaves us with a difficult but necessary challenge: to reconsider our assumptions about the neutrality of cultural spaces, to question the sources of artistic funding, and to confront the reality that art can never be entirely separated from the politics of its production.
Through her performance, she exemplified how contemporary art, in being a mirror of society, can be used as a tool for ethical reflection, and she raised questions that everyone should try to answer: should museums accept partnership from companies whose business practices are ethically ambiguous? Is it possible to separate art from the interests of its patrons, or are such partnerships inevitably political?
