“The ballad of sexual dependency” Nan Goldin is famous for. Over the years the photo artist and New York bartender friends and chance was accompanied by acquaintances with the camera, photographed in the wild, vulnerable, desperate moments. The colour-intensive images, in 1986 as a book is published, showing among other drug addicts, hard-to-AIDS, fragile existences. You, yourself, occurs once blood leaks eye into the picture, your lover had beat her up. More addictive than life Goldins work moving figures, mostly.

Now, however, the 65-year-old artist has taken the reins in the Hand. You fought against Purdue Pharma, the company that brought in the US with aggressive advertising opioids as painkillers among the people, and more than 200’000 people died. The company, which is in the United States before the court, belongs to the members of the industrial family of Sackler. And the Sacklers promote for a long time cultural institutions. Goldin and her colleagues to demand that museums assume no, as they say, “blood money” from the Sacklers.

The photographer knows exactly what she’s talking about: in the past, she was once addicted to Heroin; five years ago, it fell into disrepair to the painkiller Oxycontin, which had been after surgery prescribed. She recalls in Interviews a feeling of warmth, in the of the drugs rush you’ve bathed, but also to the lonely days in darkened bedrooms, and finally to death by the high doses that you gave at that time, illegal.

a representative of the victim

Since your withdrawal Goldin celebrates a Revival – not as a Chronicler of night-life, but as an activist during the day: In the spiral staircase of the Guggenheim Museum in New York fluttered bits of Paper that are reminiscent of torn recipes; in Washington, the Smithsonian Institution, the protesters laid as dead on the ground.

The pressure acts. The Guggenheim Museum wants to accept Sackler dollars more. And in London, the National Portrait Gallery has rejected last week, a donation by the Sacklers in the amount of one Million pounds, the Tate Gallery may accept no money for the family, and the South London Gallery was heard, the house had already been given in the last year, a donation back. The Sacklers waive in London now, in turn, more donations. British Museum, people react with mixed feelings to Goldins campaign. Finally, the public sector spends less money for art.

Nan Goldin sees herself as a victim representative, you will be arguing moral. It was not always so. Earlier you dismissed critics sharp the of her as an artist of social responsibility required and accused, with their intimate scene, Heroin, insights in the drug to make chic. In the 90s, the fashion industry had taken up Goldins optics and also with drugs flirts addiction. Later, then fell into the social media, the taboo, to show a mass of very private pictures. Also Goldin can be considered as one of the Pioneers.

(editing Tamedia)

Created: 26.03.2019, 20:03 PM