Artwashing

When a commercial project is subjected to artwashing, the work and presence of artists and creative workers is used to add a cursory sheen to a place's transformation.

They, and the artists, fear The Denizen risks becoming a similar ghost building. They are also deeply suspicious of the “artwashing” strategy, through which civic bodies, hand in hand with the developers, use culture as a Trojan horse for the advancement of the developers’ schemes.

Hundreds of artists and tens of thousands of people across the world have endorsed the call for public broadcasters and artists to withdraw from the event in support of Palestinian rights and against Israel’s blatant artwashing and pinkwashing of apartheid.

Art critic Ben Lewis agrees: “It’s artwashing – it launders oligarchs’ reputations. The more these individuals, and these countries, weave themselves into the international art world, the harder it is to criticise them.”

Notable in the delegation was a significant contingent of cultural bodies, a move which immediately drew criticism that the Gulf state was “art-washing” – using Britain’s venerable institutions to improve its international image even as concerns over Riyadh’s human rights record continue to mount.