Anna Ostoya + Chantal Mouffe

Anna Ostoya and Chantal Mouffe
Politics and Passions

Book review by Caroline Blockus
October 31, 2021

I don’t think that art can change the world but art can contribute to changing the world.

Chantal Mouffe ‘Art’

In November of 2020 we published my debut article – an exhibition review of Anna Ostoya’s solo show ‘Motions’at Bortolami Gallery in NYC. Eleven months later, I am thrilled to once again feature Ostoya and her newly published book ‘Politics and Passions’, an artistic interpretation of a political theory by Chantal Mouffe.

The back cover summary reads: “In 2009, the artist Anna Ostoya created a booklet with textual collages using an essay by the political theorist Chantal Mouffe, ‘Politics and Passions: The Stakes of Democracy’ (2002). In the essay, Mouffe critiqued the then-dominant ‘beyond left and right’ politics of neoliberalism and warned of its dangers – the rise of right-wing populist parties. Fascinated by Mouffe’s strikingly prophetic ideas, as well as her bold call to fight the status quo in order to radicalise democracy and to prevent violence, Ostoya returned to the booklet in 2019.
She composed for it a series of portraits based on sketches of people on the New York City subway and on reproductions of her paintings and collages from the preceding decade.

The text follows an unusual format that was carefully implemented by Anna Ostoya. She separates and stretches Mouffe’s essay over multiple pages, giving it a poetic rhythm.

Ostoya embeds a certain order/regularity as the placement of her work isn’t incidental; every page with an artwork starts in first person, giving the text - as well as the figures in the images - personality. 

By breaking the text up, Ostoya not only transforms it, but also increases its accessibility. The reader is rewarded with the tactile stimulation of flipping pages more frequently while the abstract collage-portraits offer moments of contemplation, inviting the reader to pause and reflect. 

The portraits feel like a surrealist dream: The people are anonymous, stripped of any facial features, yet radiate a lot of emotion. They have a hypnotic effect with some of them appearing slightly unsettling - a perfect embodiment of what I would describe as expressive surrealism. 

Ostoya combines different elements from previous works in each, creating a sort of scavenger hunt for those familiar with her art. She has been collecting and working on these for ten years, and one could almost view this body of 25 works as a retrospect of Ostoya’s oeuvre - contained in and surrounding the outlines of NYC subway passengers she encountered on her commutes on the J line. 

In my view one cannot understand democratic politics without acknowledging passions as the moving force in the field of politics.

Chantal Mouffe ‘Agonistic Pluralism’

Mouffe’s essay, while written almost two decades ago, provides a relevant commentary on the current global political situation. She touches on the reasons for the harsh right/left divide and provides insights how political fatigue could be overcome. She points out the displacement of politics by morality, which eradicates the inherently democratic debate between right and left views (and their alternatives), and instead reduces it to a moralist debate between right or wrong.

Creating art as a response to political theory may not be as common as creating art in response to political events, but it is a practice that offers additional levels of engagement, especially for those looking for an alternative access point.

The book concludes with two chapters of conversation between Mouffe and Ostoya – one from February 28, 2020, and one, almost a year later, from February 7th, 2021. In it the two authors contextualise the essay into today’s world and political happenings. They reflect on their professions and collaboration, the politics of the last forty years, the contemporary moment, and how art and politics often fall into the same processes. 

Overall the book manifests how art can contribute to the political decision-making process. It invites readers to think about the current state of politics, how we got there, and where we can go from here. It is written and presented in a way that enables readers to delve (further) into the subject and enhance their own views. As Anna Ostoya describes: “That’s how I’d like my work to impact people. To make them recover that ability to look at the world beyond the stereotypes, beyond what’s considered the right way. To imagine other possibilities. That ability is of political significance. [...] I think that is the biggest challenge to artists  – to keep making work that awakens that desire to question.” Anna Ostoya ‘Art’

Chantal Mouffe (b. 1943, Belgium, based in London) is an intellectual activist best known for her post-Marxist and post-structuralist work on politics. She has taught and researched at the University of Westminster in London and at many universities around the world. She wrote For a left-populism, Agonistics, The Democratic Paradox, The Return of the Political, The Dimensions of Radical Democracy, The Challenge of Carl Schmitt, and, co-authored with Ernesto Laclau, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy.

‍Anna Ostoya (b. 1978, Krakow, based in New York) is an artist whose work spans multiple aesthetic traditions and includes painting, collage, photography and writing. It has been shown internationally, at Zacheta National Gallery, Warsaw, La Kunsthalle Mulhouse, the 2015 Lyon Biennial, Manifesta 7 Rovereto, Museum of Modern in New York, Tate St. Ives, and Kunsthaus Baselland.

Discourse is a series of small books in which a cultural theorist, curator, or artist explores a theme, an artwork, or an idea in an extended illustrated text. 

Anna Ostoya and Chantal Mouffe "Politics and Passions"
Discourse 005
2021, First Edition published by MACK
Paperback with flaps
12.5 x 19.5 cm, 224 pages
ISBN 978-1-913620-19-6
July 2021
€17.50 £15 $20
https://mackbooks.co.uk/products/politics-and-passions-br-anna-ostoya-chantal-mouffe