Artwashing

A procedure in which an individual or company, government or other group promotes visual art and its concepts, to create a benefit and clean up its image in regards to corrupt behavior at the political, environmental, labor or social level, in an opposite manner to the goal of the announced initiatives of the artist.

'Promoting arts and culture as some form of civilising gift'

Artwashing has clear associations with the use of art to add a gloss of creativity to areas to increase property prices, gentrify neighbourhoods and ultimately displace local people who cannot afford to live there anymore. Art is used as a way of building ‘trust’, and socially engaged artists are experts in embedding within communities and earning their trust. 

ex-industrial estates >

While the term “artwashing” specifically implies arguments familiar to critics of the ways that corporations have used environmental initiatives to “greenwash” their image, organizers are equally attentive to the ways that artwashing functions as a racial aesthetic strategy for real estate professionals.

Artists are finding themselves increasingly entangled with city planners, developers and financial capital as they are rendered a spectacle in the service of speculation.

While artists do not power development, they can at least use the process of urban transformation to find opportunities to create worthwhile work—often in spaces ill suited to other uses. If handled carefully, changes in use and tenancy can be positive.

A Building in Oude Westen:
A neighbourhood in Rottterdam which has been subjected to gentrification over the years

low-income residents >

rented to artists

Oude Westen