Help! I Hate... The Silence

Every week, The Art Journal’s resident artworld Agony Aunt Charlotte Jansen answers your questions about access, gatekeeping and sticky social problems.

Have a burning question for her? Get in touch anonymously here.

People tell me behind closed doors that they love my work. That it’s moving and shifted something in them, but no one wants to support me publicly. I’m Jerusalem born and raised, my work is about empathy, often in the context of Israel-Palestine.

I am marginalised from many Jewish spaces for my criticism of Israel. I am also beginning to feel pushed out of art spaces here for being visibly Jewish; almost like the right have hijacked anti-antisemitism, while the left want nothing to do with it, or with Jewish culture.

People still invite me to talk on panels about other artists’ work, or about craft, process, medium, or to write and to curate, but there seems to be too much fear around endorsing my actual work.

Last week I posted on Instagram and I had more people save the post than like it. I am nervous to bring it up and to put myself out there, as I may lose the conditional success and visibility I have, but I want to show my work. For me, and because if people are nervous about it, maybe it’s raising something that isn’t included in the art world at the moment.

What should I do?

This hits very close to my heart and home – full disclosure, my own partner is a Jewish artist, with dual Israeli and British citizenship, who has been outspokenly against the Israeli government and has a pro-Palestine, pro-peace stance for two decades in his art and in public. So this is a situation I know intimately, understand and have daily conversations about, with both my partner and other members of the community. Since October 7th, his international clients have slowly disappeared, his collective have had multiple international institutional exhibitions cancelled. They are now facing a situation where they can only exhibit in Jewish settings and spaces – ones in which they do not always feel comfortable or identify. It is a very isolating place to be. You end up feeling unwelcome anywhere, but equally unable to complain – Israelis are seen purely through the lens of the brutality and power of their current government, one that I would call a dictatorship.

From what you've written, you occupy a comparable space. You describe being pushed to the margins of Jewish spaces because of your criticism of Israel, which many people don’t realise can be incredibly harsh (my partner has received death threats), while also sensing hesitation within parts of the art world because you are visibly Jewish and your work engages the Israel-Palestine issue through empathy rather than ideological or political certainty. It doesn’t really matter if people disagree with you or not, the experience you describe is real: being invited to discuss process, curate, moderate and contextualise, but not be fully seen as an artist in your own right.

At home, we talk about the fact that these experiences and struggles are a privilege compared to the suffering of people in Gaza and Lebanon. I talk every week with a friend from Gaza, a young father of three, and our conversations are a constant reminder of that. It’s very hard to complain about anything when we all know what is happening to the Palestinian people.

For many people, it’s difficult to separate a national identity from a government’s genocidal actions. Even if they privately understand the complexity, they often aren’t willing to engage with such questions in public. We’re living in a deeply troubling and divisive time, where understanding multiplicity and holding tensions and nuanced points of view feels virtually impossible.

There is widespread fear and lack of courage among people in positions of power and authority – the ones who have platforms, and could allow for conversations to happen that include multiple voices, but don’t. I fear you’re experiencing this.

People will tell you their work has moved them, has shifted their perspective. They will privately save your posts because they know you have something worthy to say, but they keep their admiration behind closed doors, out of fear. The painful part is that fear leaves you carrying the consequences.

I would also question, gently, whether you should read the silence you are experiencing as a verdict or reflection of your work. People hesitate out of fear of backlash, institutional guidelines, uncertainty about saying the wrong thing, exhaustion, loyalty to a tribe – that doesn’t mean your work has failed. What you’ve said implies the opposite. The fact you can move or shift anyone, even privately, means something. You are affecting people – that’s the fundamental purpose of art, isn’t it?

The question for me isn’t how to make people less apprehensive or nervous – you can’t. It is whether you want to organise your artistic ambitions around that fear. Artists don't choose where they were born, and they don’t usually choose whether their work is controversial – that’s context and circumstances. What you do get to decide is whether to keep making your work, regardless of whether it’s accepted or not. But perhaps you could begin to ask people to directly engage with it. Keep showing your work and keep writing about your experiences – maybe, instead of endorsement, look for meaningful conversations about what you’re doing. Let your audience find you directly instead of waiting for institutions or peers to legitimise you.

Art has always had an awkward relationship with certainty. Enduring work often happens before there is social permission to celebrate it. I don't know whether that's true of yours. Time will decide that. But if your work is genuinely making people feel more than they are currently willing to say aloud, your task isn't to become more palatable. If you can forge better understanding, even between just two people who believe they’re opposed, I think that’s a powerful act indeed.