Arts & International Affairs: Volume 2, Number 2 | Page 148

turn, European citizens’ lives are punctured by the horrific reality of repeated
terrorist in their capital cities. In this sense, refugees and Europeans share
a sense of fear when faced with the same enemy. Right-wing parties, such
as the Conservatives in the United Kingdom or Fidesz in Hungary and even
more strongly so far right parties like the Front National in France, view the
refugees as a threat to European identity. The crisis is perceived as a largescale
social problem that ought to be contained by closing the borders rather
than by taking shared responsibility and coordinating a response across
governments in Europe and beyond. From this point of view, Syrians are
Muslim, and their religious practices and way of life as fundamentally non-
European. By equating the general practice of Islam with fundamentalist
ideology and terrorist acts, the presence of refugees on European territories
only increases the strength of religious extremism and ultimately raises the
risk of terrorist attacks.
Art can bridge the gap between the elite art world and the traumatic
experience of refugees crossing the Mediterranean in a boat, in order to
begin new lives in Europe. In ����, the Danish artist E. B. Itso traveled to the
Italian island of Lampedusa, the entry point into Europe for refugees travel
on boats from North Africa. Upon the boats’ arrival, most people change the
clothes from the trip and leave them behind, as they begin their new lives in
Europe. The artist collected discarded garments, dipped the in an Yves Kleinbluish
paint, and printed them on paper. The two paintings, called “The
Shedding,” are framed with driftwood found on Lampedusa’s beaches. They
were priced €��,��� at Art Basel, to be donated (Itso’s website). These works
of art represent the materiality of the refugees’ arrival into Europe and make
ever more visible the stark contrast between the harsh destinies of refugees
that survived the journey across the Mediterranean and the elite culture
world of art dealers and artists in Europe. In that sense, Itso immortalizes in
paint the culture wars that inform the encounter between refugees and the
European ways of life—the symbolic shedding of old clothes by the refugees
who survived the boat ride across the Mediterranean speaks to the refugees’
strong desire to leave behind the reality of the civil war in Syria. Moreover,
Itso’s works invite the audience to imagine what is not represented in the
paintings—the new destinies that refugees take on once they have changed
into their new clothes and being their lives in Europe. By presenting the
works of art at Art Basel and pricing them as expensive works of art, Itso
created an unmediated connection between the elite cultural world of
Europe and the experience of refugees as new Europeans. In other words,
the artistic elites whose everyday lives are otherwise far removed from the
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