CURRENT EVENT II

 PLAGIARISM OR INSPIRATION?

Art theft is a “obvious” method of stealing artwork and present it as your own, in other words, simply copy and paste. Tracing is also part of art theft which consist of duplicating the artwork without making a little or no changes at all. These are just two examples of the many ways someone can steal you art.

Plagiarism has existed for many years, but it has incremented with the popularization new media, such as social media. Today, if you upload your artwork on the internet, it can easily be downloaded and posted on another forum but without giving you any credit because it is not documented as legally yours. These usually happens among artist who nobody knows and are trying to come up. A simple comment, shared or like can change an artist whole career.

In 2021, the photography student Andrea Sacchetti exhibited his project in the Milan Photo Festival, which a Twitter account later discovered that, in fact, it was an identical to another photography made by the African artist Aïda Muluneh in 2014.

Muluneh's interpretation of Dante's Inferno for an exhibition at the

Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art.

This recent event caused trouble in the artistic community, dividing it into two groups: is this a case of plagiarism or just inspiration?

In simple words:

Plagiarism.-Degraded version or completely imitated.

Inspiration.-Take something to create innovation.

In photography is very common that students replicate photos they admire in order to understand all the concepts one single photo contains and apply them into their own works, but in the case of Sacchetti, he indisputably plagiarized Muluneh and he had support of a significant European photo festival.

After hundreds of retweets, the Festival issued a statement on their Instragram account, acknowledging the "identical" image. However, they further state that "There was no will to plagiarize against such a prestigious author".

Sources:

Murabayashi, A. (2021, October 13). A STUDENT PLAGIARIZED AN AFRICAN ARTIST. THEN HIS WORK WAS EXHIBITED AT THE MILAN PHOTO FESTIVAL. Photography. https://www.diyphotography.net/a-student-plagiarized-an-african-artist-then-his-work-was-exhibited-at-the-milan-photo-festival/

Ragbir, L. (2021, October 14). The Fuzzy Line Between Inspiration and Appropriation. Hyperallergic. https://hyperallergic.com/683745/the-fuzzy-line-between-inspiration-and-appropriation/

Tripathi, A. (2017, January 26). Problems Plaguing the Art Industry Globally. Entrepreneur Europe. https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/288290