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Banu Cennetoğlu’s BEINGSAFEISSCARY (2017) placed the words “Being safe is scary” on the facade of the Fridericianum in Kassel, above the museum entrance. The phrase can be read as a warning about the uneasy relationship between security and fear, but the available sources do not establish one definitive historical event or meaning that Cennetoğlu intended.
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What was Banu Cennetoğlu’s documenta 14 installation?
BEINGSAFEISSCARY was a 2017 work by Turkish artist Banu Cennetoğlu. The official documenta 14 retrospective identifies the inscription on the Fridericianum’s facade in Kassel as her work. Independent coverage describes it as replacing the museum’s name above the entrance. The museum’s familiar institutional sign was thus displaced by a sentence that could be read as a question, warning or contradiction.
The wording is usually rendered as “Being safe is scary.” Its placement matters: rather than appearing inside a gallery, the text occupied the public-facing surface of a major exhibition venue. That gave it the appearance of a building label while unsettling the reassuring promise a museum or other institution might ordinarily convey.
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- Length: 0.5in / 1cm, Height: 10.25in / 26cm, Width: 8.75in / 22cm
- By Klaus Honnef
- Hardcover
- 95 pages
- Imprint: Taschen
What might “Being safe is scary” mean?
The phrase turns an expected reassurance inside out. Safety is generally understood as protection from danger; Cennetoğlu’s sentence makes that condition itself unsettling. It may prompt viewers to ask who is being protected, what risks are being managed, and whether a promise of security can conceal forms of control or exclusion.
Those are possible readings of the wording and its setting, not a settled account of the artist’s intent. A Scroll.in article matching the title frames the work through reminders that history repeats itself, but the sources available here do not identify a specific historical event as the definitive reference. It is more accurate to treat historical parallels as interpretation than to attribute them to Cennetoğlu as fact.
How did the work fit documenta 14?
documenta 14 was a two-city exhibition in Athens and Kassel, directed by Adam Szymczyk and organized under the motto “Learning from Athens.” Athens ran from April 8 to July 16, 2017; Kassel followed from June 10 to September 17. The Fridericianum facade work appeared during the Kassel presentation.
In its retrospective, documenta describes the exhibition as seeking to decentralize and decolonize the Northwestern canon. It says works in Kassel formed references among colonialism and slavery, German-Greek relations, expropriation and gender. This is the institution’s account of the curatorial framework; it provides context for encountering Cennetoğlu’s inscription without proving that the work refers to any one of those subjects.
According to documenta’s retrospective, the exhibition recorded 339,000 visitors in Athens and 891,500 in Kassel, with 163 artists and 103 historical positions participating. The retrospective presents those as exhibition-wide counts, not as figures for Cennetoğlu’s work.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How is the facade work distinct from other documenta 14 works?
Marta Minujín’s Parthenon of Books, a large installation on Kassel’s Friedrichsplatz, also figured in discussions of documenta 14’s historical framing. It was a separate work, not part of Cennetoğlu’s facade installation. Keeping the two distinct helps clarify the exhibition’s broader context without folding different artists’ works into one.
For longer historical background, documenta’s archive says the exhibition series was conceived in postwar Germany in response to the Third Reich’s policies toward “degenerate art.” That institutional account describes documenta’s origins; on its own, it does not establish that Cennetoğlu’s phrase refers to that history.
Where to find documenta 14’s exhibition publications
The official documenta 14 site lists the Daybook and the Reader as the exhibition’s two main publications. They offer routes into the exhibition’s own material and context, although that listing does not establish their present retail availability.
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