I didn’t do it
2016
Installation, variable dimensions.
Materials: Graffiti
Collection: Courtesy of the artist.
Ria Pacquée has organised many performative interventions and statements within the urban landscape. Since 1978, she has spread political slogans in the streets of Antwerp as one strand of her practice. This includes sentences such as “Oh godverdoemme” (“Oh goddamn it”) or “ga langzaam naar uw werk” (“go to work slowly”), and are written onto abandoned buildings using spray paint, but occasionally within exhibitions. This message “I didn’t do it” is on the one hand a contradictory message, as the artist carries out the (sometimes illegal) acts herself. “I didn’t do it” is also something said in Chapter 5 titled Blue of Bolaño’s Antwerp, in a scenario when a local person is questioned by the police following the shooting of six young people close to a campsite.
