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The Debates and Issues Surrounding Mike Nelson’s Heygate Pyramid: On the Relationship Between Gentrification, Resistance and Public Art

  • Journal of History of Modern Art
  • 2019, (45), pp.37-64
  • DOI : 10.17057/kahoma.2019..45.002
  • Publisher : 현대미술사학회
  • Research Area : Arts and Kinesiology > Art > Arts in general > Art History
  • Received : April 29, 2019
  • Accepted : May 27, 2019
  • Published : June 30, 2019

Chison Kang 1

1제주대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This article investigates the relationship between gentrification, resistance, public art and class, by looking at Michael Nelson’s Heygate Pyramid project. First, it analyzes the cause of public antagonism and resistance to gentrification and public art. Second, it examines the way it affects the reception of public art, criticism and the role of art. Heygate Pyramid conveys a symbolic meaning about the reality of public art which is complicit in urban regeneration, money and power; public art functions as a “symbolic economy” for urban image construction and social control. It also takes the role of “cultural mask” to conceal gentrification: unfair class-based urban rebuilding. Heygate Pyramid suggests two consequential issues concerning public art and the role of art in gentrification context. Firstly, it signifies a need for a conceptual framework for criticism of public art which embraces the realities of production, operation, urban social justice and ethics. Secondly, it shows the role of art in resisting not only gentrification but also the unequal urban restructuring and instrumentalisation of art itself. Therefore, this demonstrates the alternative form of art that seeks to collapse art into everyday social movements.

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