8 minute read
A New World Order
From the V&A to Venice, Martin Roth is no stranger to the big stage. But for this year's Biennale, he's focusing on undiscovered talent and emerging markets in a reinvigorated search for what's new in art.
Words by Francesca Gavin
Advertisement
I am standing outside an art-deco villa on the edges of southwest Berlin. The area exudes a kind of serenity that feels a perfect place to step away from the intensity of the creative world and think. This is where Dr Martin Roth has returned to after years overseeing some of the world’s largest and most broadly conceived museums – from Dresden’s German Hygiene Museums to the Victoria and Albert in London. He is now no longer at the helm of a giant ship, and is rethinking his next moves. His first project is co-curating the Azerbaijan pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale.
Dr Roth – a slim, well-dressed, sharply intelligent gentleman in his early sixties – has a long-running connection to Baku and Azerbaijan. “It’s a very long story, but I’ll try to make it short,” he begins over tea and apple cake at his dining-table. He had long been interested in the contemporary art from former communist countries, reflecting his own experience of a changing German landscape in the 1980s and 1990s. “I was really interested in what would happen in all those countries after the political change,” he continues. “I learnt that contemporary art was quite active in Baku. I went there and met the curator Leyla Akhundzadeh. She was just brilliant. A lot of energy, extremely solid, reliable. She had created a show of contemporary art from Azerbaijan in Dresden in 2008. Normally with those shows, people aren’t really interested. But not with that exhibition – a lot of people came. Honestly, it was a surprise. A few years later, she had a horrible car accident and was killed. That was my first contact [with Azerbaijan]. You could even call it a kind of emotional contact,” he muses.
He first travelled to Baku in the early 1990s after becoming aware of the country’s creative output. “It was still a dusty place – beautiful but dusty. I came back six or seven years ago, and that was a surprise. Zaha Hadid’s building was an eye-opener to the architecture, culture and contemporary art there. They created an atmosphere for new ideas.”
As director of the V&A, Martin Roth oversaw blockbuster exhibitions including the record-breaking ‘David Bowie Is’ in 2013. This summer he will be in Venice curating the Azerbaijan Pavilion, featuring digital works by Hypnotica.
Last year, Roth was approached by curator, gallerist and old friend Emin Mammadov, who had also lived in Berlin since the early 1990s, to co-curate Azerbaijan’s pavilion at Venice. “Being a museum director for I don’t know how many years, I hadn’t created a show for a very long time,” Roth points out. What drew him to the project was the idea of working in a group to discover new artists from the region. “The original idea was to use an archive of photography from different parts of the country. Azerbaijan combines of a lot of different ethnic groups, different social backgrounds. There are a lot of different languages, different alphabets.” His aim was to explore ways of representing how that breadth of cultural background and experience has co-existed together for centuries. “Despite different religious, ethnic and linguistic backgrounds, people there continue to live together peacefully. Why don’t we show it?”
Martin Roth
The exhibition provides an interesting contrast to the rising nationalism in much of the world. But it’s not a political statement against nationalism; instead it’s a positive example of how people live together. Rather than invite the same big names that always show on the art circuit, Roth used the biennale as an opportunity to search for the new: “That was the original idea of Venice. Where are the really new ideas?”
The result is a two-floor show at the Palazzo Lezze in Campo Santo Stefano entitled ‘Under One Sun. The Art of Living Together’. The projects, by two artists, began from photographic archives of Azerbaijan, and recorded statements in the different languages of the country. Sound, light, projection, and the moving image are all part of the immersive installations on show by artists Elvin Nabizade and Hypnotica, also known as Javid Guliyev. Guliyev comes from an architectural and design background, and his works have included video performances and projection mapping pieces. Nabizade, in comparison, was born in Georgia and studied in Azerbaijan, focusing on sculpture and installation. Roth did not want the digital elements in their work to be used flippantly. Instead, it was a medium to create a reaction in people.
The German Hygiene Museum
The sculpture gallery at the V&A
Images from ‘Pink Floyd: Their Mortal Remains’ at the V&A
The German pavilion at EXPO 2000
A David Bowie costume at the V&A
One memorable work involves people walking and losing elements of their identity to those around them. “It’s a very symbolic method to explain what it means if you are confronted with a different culture. It’s not about education and explaining to somebody what they have to do, but showing examples,” Roth enthuses. That experiential element seems to embody the entire approach to the pavilion. Here, the senses become a powerful and central mode of communication.
The pavilion is being put together by a small, dedicated team of about six people. This is an interesting contrast to Roth’s past experience as director of major museums, with hundreds of people under his influence. The museums Roth has worked at have not focused on contemporary art. Instead, he comes from a broader background. He worked as a curator at the German History Museum, before directing the largest science museum in Germany and overseeing various applied art and design museums in Dresden. He was director of thematic exhibitions at Expo 2000. “The Science Museum and the German Hygiene Museum were my babies. That’s why I started to work in museums,” he explains. “In the 1920s, there was this idea of a new community, a new audience, this Weimar Republic democracy, and then the Nazis came and turned it around to the exact opposite. So I was always interested in the museum. I’m not an artist. My background is sociology and anthropology.” Roth’s strategy? Do not do what people expect.
When the V&A asked him to take over, he couldn’t refuse. “I was the first non-British citizen to run a national museum – and on top of it, German! That was incredible.” He opened up the space to an audience beyond the norm, commissioning exhibitions that fed into wider areas of popular culture, such as the ones devoted to David Bowie or Pink Floyd. The former broke V&A visitor records. “The social component combined with arts and culture was always my driving force,” Roth says, insisting his success was due to having a good team and taking risks.
When the UK voted to leave the European Union in 2016, Roth became an accidental hero for Europe. He quit the V&A, partially blaming Brexit, and in doing so made international headlines. The broad, public reaction to his departure was a surprise. “I didn’t expect that at all. I really believe in – it sounds pretty naïve today – but I believe in Europe. I believe in non-nationalism. I believe in languages. I really remember the Cold War – difficult moments, atomic weapons being installed here in Europe and by the Russians. I met my first Russian when I was 25 or 26 – before that I’d never seen a Russian person. I don’t want us to go back to that. And I will do everything I can.” Hiring a German to run a very British national museum felt to Roth like a European impulse. Brexit was the opposite. “I said, OK, this is not me,” he says. “I can’t be in public working for the government and at the same time criticizing the government. It’s just honest to leave.”
Roth is still being regularly interviewed about his Brexit views, but he notes this was not the only reason he left the V&A: he was ready for new things. He has continued to work on a number of boards in Dubai and Germany. He is on the Board of the Goethe-Institut. He was also on the Board of the British Council, though his tenure is ending soon. “Now I’ve got quite a lot of offers for curating shows. I haven’t thought about it, but I really enjoy it.”
Do not expect Roth to become the next super curator name to drop. He is all about collaboration and bringing people together, rather than showcasing his own ideas. And he has been focusing on the future of the museum. Rather than permanent collections, temporary exhibitions and international blockbuster shows, Roth sees a future where the connectedness and a personal relationship to objects can lead to new forms of knowledge and discovery. Where a digital network can enable objects within museum collections to communicate between each other directly to create new ways to access objects and learn. “Years ago we would have said we don’t have enough capacity. It’s completely different now – we can do everything. You have a totally accessible collection,” he explains passionately. Roth sees a future of discovery and access – for academics, businesses and simple enthusiasts. Under it all is a reinvestment in the emotional, human aspect of seeing things around us.
