Beate Passow

A Barbary macaque sits on a martial gun barrel in Gibraltar; a powerful bear mounts a bull; a skeleton-like figure strides over destroyed refugee boats on Lampedusa. The strange figures that inhabit “Monkey Business” narrate a penetrating mythology of the 21^st century. In her narrative approach Passow subverts the established tapestry tradition, not praising rulers and heroes, but directing criticism – at today’s Europe. Once celebrated as the stronghold of democracy and humanism, it is today marked by a military defensive stance at its borders, by a thoroughly corrupt capitalism, and by increasingly brazen Neo-Nazi movements.