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Vanessa Graell
Updated Thursday, February 8, 2024-12:13
Museum of Forbidden Art Works attacked, persecuted or censored
Holy Week poster "If my Christ is gay, may God come and see him"
The Fox News reporter, very seriously, begins the news like this: "Food activists kidnap and behead Ronald McDonald al-Qaeda style." When he mentions the terrorist group, his voice becomes even more serious. It is 2011, shortly before Osama bin Laden was killed, and the news comes from Helsinki. The kidnapped Ronald McDonald is the typical plastic doll from one of the hamburger restaurants in Finland and was stolen by the self-proclaimed Food Liberation Army, four friends dressed in black and with balaclavas led by the artist Jani Leinonen, who demanded a series of conditions from McDonald's to free their clown: answer questions about their ethics, the quality of their food, the employment of illegal immigrants... Upon not receiving a response from the company (whose policy is "not negotiating with criminals," they clarified on Fox News), the group decapitated the doll in a wooden guillotine, with a very Scandinavian design, a bit Ikea. But they did not damage the clown owned by McDonalds but rather a plaster replica created for his performance and which would later be exhibited in various museums around the world.
After a police interrogation of more than 20 hours and a fine, Jani Leinon became the
enfant terrible
of Finnish art, the most irreverent, one of the public's favorites. «Once a week, after training, she used to go to McDonald's to eat. Well, I still do... Now they even have vegan food. For years she would look at Ronald and think 'How can I elevate him to the status of a symbol?' Clowns
smile and cry, in medieval tradition jesters made the king laugh with their jokes and criticisms disguised as humor, but if they went too far they could cut off their heads... he wanted to play with that idea
.
And McDonald's is a global icon: you don't need to speak English, Spanish or Chinese to understand it," says Jani Leinonen at the Museum of Forbidden Art in Barcelona, which has dedicated a modernist chapel to another of its many Ronalds, the one that sparked the most controversy. :
McJesus
(2015). This crucifixion of the McDonald's clown caused violent riots in the Haifa Museum, one of the oldest in Israel, and had to be removed from the Sacred
Goods
exhibition .
Inaugurated in August 2018, the exhibition exhibited several works that questioned religions in the globalized world dominated by consumer culture. Five months after its opening, chaos broke out, with massive protests in front of the museum demanding the removal of a work that the Christian community considered "offensive." «In the exhibition there was even a
Barbie-Jesus
and other much more critical works... It all started on social networks. Suddenly one day I received dozens of threatening messages. It should be noted that the leaders of the Arab Christian community were open to dialogue.
Being a Christian in Europe is not the same as being a Christian in Israel: it is a minority community
, which lives a very complex reality," explains Leinonen.
Months before the exhibition opened, Leinonen had explicitly asked that his piece not be included because he supported the Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment (BDS) movement against Israel for its occupation of the Palestinian territories. «When I once again claimed my support for Palestine, a second wave of criticism and threats began, this time from angry Jews. Everything was very violent, with threats of sabotage that reached my new exhibition in Switzerland. It was given a lot of publicity around the world, several media outlets wanted to interview me, there were even accusations of Islamophobia... I just wanted to hide under the ground and disappear," he sighs. During those days of chaos, in one of the demonstrations a Molotov cocktail was thrown at the entrance to the museum.
McJesus
was eventually retired. And the Catalan businessman Tatxo Benet bought the work for his collection of censored art.
«I am not a religious person, I have had very bad experiences with the Church in Finland, which is majority Lutheran and very harsh towards other confessions and minorities. But
I'm a big fan of Jesus! He was a revolutionary
who fought against power and oppression, against the imperialism of Rome. He is like an idol to me. But capitalism takes those positive values and twists them,” says Leinonen, whose image is that of the hooligan artist who plays with brands and logos. Not in the pop style of Andy Warhol, more like Banksy,
hacking
the system (in fact, he was one of the artists invited by the graffiti artist to exhibit at his Dismaland amusement park). Leinonen creates critical mosaics with Disney, Ariel, Kellogs, Looney Tunes... But he has a predilection for McDonald's.
One of Jani Leinonen's pieces that plays with different company logos..
«Over the years there have been many cases of censorship in my work. And self-censorship. "I must confess that I have been afraid in relation to some works," he admits with some dejection as he tours the rooms of the Museum of Forbidden Art. «We think that censorship comes from religions, fundamentalism and fanaticism. And it is like that. But the narrative of capitalism is like censorship, even more perverse, because it leads you to self-censorship.
They make us believe that there is no alternative. You are afraid of losing
your relationship with the gallery, the collectors, your profession, your livelihood... In the end you internalize it and start to censor yourself. And it's something that eats my soul," he adds.
Although his
McJesus
has been the most high-profile case, Leinonen has been involved in more than one controversy. The last one, last December, when he signed, together with a hundred Finnish artists,
a manifesto boycotting
the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art for having among its benefactors the collector Poju Zabludowicz, a prominent Jewish magnate whose fortune is linked to the arms trade between Finland and Israel. «It is a state museum and we artists refused to exhibit there again until they had an ethical code that prevents receiving money from businessmen who trade in weapons. All the pressures we suffered were harsher than in Israel. They called us cultural Nazis, anti-Semites... Finland is a small country [5.5 million inhabitants] and everything is much more suffocating. They did not threaten me directly, but they did threaten my gallery and several of my collectors. "In the end I ended up withdrawing my signature from the manifesto," he says with some discouragement. And he continues: «
In Europe you think that Finland is the country of happiness,
but a good part of our history has been silenced: war crimes, the rise of the extreme right, the fascism that is still there... There is also the image of Sweden as a always neutral country, but they built weapons for the Nazis, for example. "The history of Scandinavia is much darker."
Leinonen takes out a drawing notebook and shows what will be his next work: terrible but at the same time beautiful illustrations of dead soldiers in the forest, a "fairy tale" (that's what he calls it) about the mass grave that has still not been unearthed. next to the school where he studied as a child, in the town of Hyvinkää. «
During the Civil War of 1918, true atrocities were committed that are hardly talked about
, nor are they taught to you in school. Mass executions that are a shame for the country have been silenced. But all that trauma stays inside," he says. Beyond the image of him as a provocative artist, Leinonen could be summarized in one of his works, a collage of letters that refers to different brands - among them Disney - with the following question:
Do you want the truth or something beautiful?
(Do you want the truth or something nice?)