Director of Haus am Lützowplatz Rejects Mohammad Shawky Hassan's Installation Due to Red-Green-Black Color Palette and Arabic Typography

A few months ago, I was invited to participate in the group exhibition for the recipients of the Berlin Senat's work stipend in 2023, which will open on Friday, March 1, 2024, at n.b.k (Neuer Berliner Kunstverein) and Haus am Lützowplatz. However, on February 19, the work that I was hoping to show was rejected by the director of Haus am Lützowplatz.

The gallery director refused my proposal to paint parts of the wall in red, green and black, claiming that the budget was insufficient and time was running out, even though she was perfectly fine with my first proposal to paint all the walls in silver, a choice that would have cost more and taken more time. I repeatedly asked for the reason behind rejecting these particular colors and until today never received an answer to my question.

More importantly, when the director of HaL saw my sketch with the Arabic typography, which I shared with her voluntarily, she wrote back to me on the same day that she will not allow any wall writing whose content has not been communicated to her in advance and which "the majority of the public cannot recognise."

It is one thing to ask for a translation as part of a conversation about the entire work, which I would have gladly provided, and another thing to demand it as a condition for showing a work and submitting it for approval by HaL and its "cooperation partners", which I categorically refuse out of principle. It is even more alarming to specifically tell me that since this is a project funded by the Senat, "a German and English translation of the work is required."

It is indeed sad to disguise censorship and paranoia from Arabic language and specific colors for reasons we all know with the "responsibility to care for visitors" as well as to other artists in the exhibition, and to witness a moment when Arabic writing on a wall has become so disturbing, even when the work is a queer reading of Egyptian and Lebanese celebrity talk shows and my intention was to show the magnitude and the history of this format, framing my space entirely with TV show titles or phrases and songs that have been popularized through these shows.

This situation could have been avoided if the curator simply gave me a call and asked me what my text is about, but it seems that we have reached unprecedented levels of mistrust in this country. Having said that, I am still ready to defend every single word in my text and its relationship to my work, whether in this installation or in general.

It is indeed ironic and very sad that an untranslated Arabic text has become too much even for an exhibition titled A Home for Something Unknown.