Undoing art and oil: an environmental tale of sponsorship, cultural justice and climate change controversy

Abstract

ABSTRACTSponsorship arrangements with fossil fuel companies raise concerns about the appropriation and exploitation of cultural institutions. The concept of cultural justice is proposed to analyze the intersections of institutional critique and struggles over injustice. ‘Liberate Tate’, an artist collective, sought to redefine the oil giant BP’s financial support of Tate art galleries in the United Kingdom. Rejecting the simple description of ‘sponsorship’, the collective worked to reframe it as a governance controversy about neoliberal agendas, cultural integrity, and compromised responses to climate change. Artistic authority and independence were reasserted through claims of injustice that disrupted corporate sponsorship narratives and made explicit the power relations that influenced environmental politics. Performances of environmental transgressions were enacted to highlight spatial, temporal, technological and embodied dimensions of climate change. Cultural justice functioned as a mode of representational politics aimed at undoing the relationship between art and oil and articulating possibilities for a climate-safe future.