Yoshinori Niwa
Cleaning a Poster During the Election Period Until It Is No Longer Legible (2024)
Durational performance and installation
Yoshinori Niwa, Cleaning a Poster During the Election Period Until It Is No Longer Legible (2024), durational performance and installation, photo: steirischer herbst / Henrik Bergstedt
Dates
14.9.–13.10.2024
Location
Kapistran-Pieller-Platz, Graz
Production specifics
Commissioned and produced by steirischer herbst ’24
Twenty twenty-four is a year of decisive elections all over the world. Not only the presidential elections in the US but also a host of parliamentary elections in Europe are slated for this autumn, and everywhere, including in Austria, the Right is on the rise. Yoshinori Niwa responds to this super election year with a project in public space—at present saturated by posters with portraits and slogans. Meant to be memorable, they all wind up looking more or less the same.
Niwa infiltrates this rigid system with a sense of absurdity and a directness typical of his works in public space. His poster shows a politician combining many gloriously dubious qualities found on the patriotic spectrum, with a slogan to match. It reads “Jedem das Unsere” (to each our own), a pun on the ancient motto “Jedem das Seine” (to each his own), which the Nazis notably placed above the entrance to the Buchenwald concentration camp. The poster is slowly washed off during the festival, disappearing completely on the day of Austria’s national elections.
Design: Yelena Maksutay
Retrospective
Retrospective