An authoritarian backlash has hold of the democracies worldwide. Since 2003 Turkey has reconfigured the government into a bespoke presidential democracy. The prime minister in Hungary has created an illiberal democracy on Russia’s model. And, since 2017, an American billionaire has been running the most powerful office in the world with his contemptuous, attention-grabbing posturing. Populist parties have twisted the political discourse in Europe to the right and celebrating electoral successes. The new populism is an antipolitics that aims at division and reinforces centrifugal social forces. Exclusionary ridicule, provocation and political incorrectness have become weapons of these movements. Culture and art have fallen into this vortex and have again become a site of dispute.

In the group exhibition To every age its art, Makoto Aida, Ines Doujak, Işıl Eğrikavuk, INDECLINE, Eugenio Merino, Csaba Nemes, Tools for Action, and Wen Yau stand up against new impositions in their countries, take to the streets, participate in the social negotiation process, point out dangers, and provoke them in their turn. What political and artistic restrictions do artists face? How and with whom do the artists feel solidarity? Which prescriptions can art offer for regaining one's own agency?