Sir Anish Kapoor with his monumental work ‘Symphony for a Beloved Daughter.’ Image by Getty/Tim P. Whitby/Stringer

By PJ Grisar March 19, 2019

Anish Kapoor is used to having ugliness added to his work.

In 2018, Kapoor, the artist responsible for “Sky Mirror” and “Ark Nova,” sued the National Rifle Association for using his sculpture “Cloud Gate” in an advertisement accused of stoking fear and division. But while he succeeded in getting the NRA to remove the unauthorized image, Kapoor’s been known to leave other manipulations of his work intact.

After he installed his sculpture “Dirty Corner,” which he nicknamed “the vagina of the queen,” at Versailles in 2015 the artwork, a huge steel funnel, was defaced with anti-Semitic graffiti, including phrases like “the second RAPE of the nation by DEVIANT JEWISH activism.” Kapoor, who is Jewish, elected to preserve the graffiti as a form of commentary. In an irony more mammoth than the sculpture in question, he was sued for this decision as the result of a complaint by Versailles municipal councilor Fabien Bouglé, who claimed that Kapoor was inciting racial hatred. (The court ordered that the graffiti be covered, and Kapoor complied by masking it with gold leaf.)

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

Now, Kapoor says, he sees fissures of division and hate in his homeland of England. In a new profile in The Guardian, the 65-year-old Mumbai-born sculptor recounted his own experiences with prejudice in London following the Brexit vote.

“Since then permission has been given for difference, rather than being celebrated, to be undermined,” Kapoor told The Guardian. But while Kapoor is concerned with the direction of the country, he’s not willing to buy into charges of anti-Semitism aimed at Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

“I’m Jewish and I believe he has done his best on this,” Kapoor said of Corbyn. “He’s an anti-Zionist. And you can be anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian without being antisemitic [sic].”

Kapoor also expressed empathy for others like him, whose British status is challenged due to racial or ethnic difference — even those whose disaffection takes extreme forms. In a controversial show of solidarity, he told The Guardian he has decided to advocate for Shamima Begum, a British citizen who joined ISIS in Syria as a teen, lost three children in the war there, and has been attempting to return to her native UK with her infant son since February of this year. Her planned return remains at a stalemate and has sparked fierce public debate about whether there is a racial dimension to calls to revoke her citizenship. Kapoor understands how a young person in her position might become radicalized.

“There’s this real sense for me of who’s next?” Kapoor told The Guardian. “There’s an atmosphere of vilifying Muslims for having extreme views. If I was a young Muslim, would I feel angry enough to have joined ISIS? I would at least think about it.”

PJ Grisar is the Forward’s culture intern. He can be reached at [email protected]

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

$90 $180

$360

Other amount