Politics reigned at the UK’s Glastonbury Festival this year.
The punk duo Bob Vylan stirred controversy—and reprobation from Prime Minister Keir Starmer—for leading the crowd in a chant of “Death, death to the IDF,” while while aging Canadian rocker Neil Young attempted to block the BBC from broadcasting his headline set, accusing the outlet of being “under corporate control.” Meanwhile, Belfast rap group Kneecap—who experienced backlash for displaying pro-Palestine messages during its Coachella set in April—performed as scheduled, despite calls for their removal by members of Parliament, as well as Starmer.
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But the politics extended beyond the musical acts at Glastonbury to the visual art, with 2007 Turner Prize winner Mark Wallinger putting on an anti-fascist art installation at the Terminal 1 Stage.
Wallinger’s work, Jungle Gym, was presented as part of the exhibition “No Human is Illegal” curated by Oriana Garzón. The work foregrounds the suffering of children in Gaza, with Wallinger noting in a statement that children “in this world have no say or no power.”
At Terminal 1, which debuted at Glastonbury last year with a show rumored to have been curated by Banksy, festivalgoers entered by answering a question from the British citizenship test. Those who answered incorrectly were sent to the back of the line. From there, visitors passed through a cabin styled as a refugee camp before reaching Jungle Gym.
“The installation binds this vision of childhood and play, with a jungle gym at the center of it, but the whole thing has been occluded by a maze of chainlink fencing,” Wallinger said. “I wanted to make something that had an ideal of childhood, but then [contrasted by] the actuality for so many people.”
The labyrinthine installation also comments on the challenges faced by migrants, including the Kafkaesque bureaucracy they often face. Wallinger used only one color in the work: cyan, or “Unicef blue.” “Unicef presents some kind of hope in the midst of this all,” he said.
The charity estimates that some 50,000 children have been killed or injured in Gaza in the nearly two years since the Israel-Hamas war began.
Wallinger added that, while making the installation, he “was thinking about the children in all this… And at the same time, I was thinking about the UN and Unicef, and some bodies of hope that have impact, but also these superpowers that attempt to stymy that at every turn.”
Garzón told The Art Newspaper that this year’s curatorial message is more urgent than ever. “This is the first generation in humanity that has seen a genocide being televised,” she said. “I feel that we are in a state of shock, because we didn’t see this kind of fascism coming so fast, but we need to wake up really quickly.”
Many artists performing at Terminal 1 were migrants themselves. “Our space here is a safe space for the migrant community, and we cannot have a better canvas than Glastonbury Festival in the middle of the [British] empire,” Garzón said.
Before Glastonbury opened to a crowd of 210,000 at Worthy Farm in Somerset, organizers received a “private and confidential” letter signed by 30 leading figures in the music industry, urging them to remove Kneecap from the lineup. One of the group’s members, Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh (a.k.a. Mo Chara), was recently released on bail after being accused of raising a flag in support of Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia group.
Garzón added: “Organisers are very conscious about it all; Kneecap represents how divided the music industry is. The festival has never had to have a big meeting to talk about a band, and they have had to do that [with Kneecap]. We are in a very critical moment for lots of reasons—now more than ever. That’s why we must deliver our message that ‘No Human is Illegal.’”
Made in Donkey also make a splash at Glastonbury
British art activist group, Led by Donkeys, also turned heads at Glastonbury over the weekend.
Their billboard, installed at Block9—a section of the festival known for its immersive stage designs and diverse music genres—featured the slogan Send them to Mars… while we party on Earth. The piece included images of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and UK Labour leader Keir Starmer in spacesuits, marching toward a rocket.
Ben Stewart, James Sadri, Oliver Knowles, and Will Rose—the artists behind Led by Donkeys—explained the work’s intent in a statement to The Guardian:
“Elon Musk and the tech bros say they want humans to become an interplanetary species. They say the great priority of humanity should be to colonize Mars. That’s not just mad, it’s dangerous. It encourages the notion that Earth is temporary and expendable, that we don’t need to cherish and protect it because we can just move on. In reality Earth is the only place where humanity can thrive. The problem is, we’re trashing it.”
They added, “If Musk and Bezos really want to live on Mars, fine, go for it, do it. Just don’t expect the rest of us to come with you. That’s why we’ve built a rocket at Glastonbury so we can send them to Mars while we party on Earth.”