The white wall
On page 80 of Inside the White Cube, O'Doherty says about the white wall: "..Its content is composed of mental projections based on unexposed assumptions. This wall is our assumptions. It is imperative for every artist to know this content and what it does to his/her assumptions."
I'm interested in the questions raised when the context of the white wall is "exposed," when it even becomes the subject of an artist's work. I can't forget as I read this book that its entire body of historical references, borrowed terms, and lingusitic conditions are Eurocentric. The idea of re-exploring the gallery space is unique in its historical context within the western world. Couldn't the "ideology of the white cube," in its entirety, be taken as a metaphor for whiteness in our culture and the blindness it inflicts on privileged people? "This wall is our assumptions." Maybe I'm reaching too far, but identifying whiteness as a characteristic, in a European gallery space, means a process of unblinding and identification of what must not be identified: the medium of the ruling elite. For artists swimming in resources, trying to see and understand what they have been handed by history is a form of decolonization. To see the medium of a white wall as a medium, as a method of maintaining power, is similar to the recognition of their own skin color. It's interesting that Western artists who are re-exploring the white space are finding it's not "inherent" to art, it's simply unexposed.
