Jonas Staal
© Jonas Staal, – Photo: Ruben Hamelink
Jonas Staal’s practice explores the relationship between art, democracy and propaganda. The artist elucidates how political, economic or ideological interests shape our realities, and organises artistic initiatives to challenge and transform that power. In 2012, Staal founded the New World Summit to create alternative parliaments and embassies for and with stateless peoples and blacklisted political organisations fighting for self-determination. Although they are often dismissed by liberal nation states as unrepresentative and even dangerous to democracy, many groups that have participated in the parliaments and assemblies over the years actually originate from anti-colonial liberation movements that fight for self-governance and redistribution of resources. The New World Summit in that sense offers a radically inclusive rethink of democracy. The parliaments function as spaces of assembly where social, cultural and political discussions typically marginalised or criminalised by the political status quo can take place. From an artistic perspective, the New World Summit explores the aesthetic and performative dimensions of democracy by investigating new forms of collective representation. Having manifested in such places as Brussels, Kochi and Utrecht, it is perhaps New World Summit — Rojava that has been particularly remarkable, for which Staal was commissioned by the autonomous government of Rojava, Northern Syria, to collaboratively design and construct a new public parliament, amidst the civil war. For this exhibition, Staal brings together the full set of scale models of New World Summit parliaments and embassies for the very first time, forming an ‘infrastructure of infrastructures’. Together they demonstrate how Staal uses art to engage in a political process to depict alternative geopolitical infrastructures, against a backdrop of emerging authoritarian regimes, global instability and climate change.
New World Embassy — Azawad, 2016, 2016
Maquette, architectural model, 46.4 × 27.5 × 72.9 cm
New World Summit — Berlin, 2012, 2012
Maquette, architectural model, 90 × 17 × 90 cm
New World Summit — Leiden, 2012, 2013
Maquette, architectural model, 70 × 12 × 70 cm
New World Summit — Kochi, 2013, 2013
Maquette, architectural model, 90 × 30 × 90 cm
New World Summit — Brussel, 2014, 2015
Maquette, architectural model, 114 × 64 × 33 cm
New World Summit — Brussels, excerpts, 2014
Video, 31:32 min.
New World Summit — Brussels, 2014
17 white honeycomb boards, each 140 × 124.5 × 1 cm
New World Summit — Rojava, 2015–18, 2016
Maquette, architectural model, styreen, MDF, perspex, 101.2 × 101.2 × 30 cm
New World Summit — Utrecht, 2016, 2025
Maquette, architectural model, 80 × 100 × 30 cm
New World Summit — Morphologies, 2012–2016
Video, 03:49 min.
New World Embassy — Kurdistan, 2023, 2025
Maquette, architectural model, 75 × 75 × 34 cm
New World Embassy — Rojava, 2016, 2025
Maquette, architectural model, 100 × 100 × 42 cm
All works courtesy the artist