Vulnerable Critters
La Casa Encendida
From May 27th to September 18th, 2022
We all live in a state of vulnerability – even though some are more vulnerable than others – and reclaiming this condition can be a route toward new forms of coexistence. Traditional studies of infection tend to rely on the metaphor of a healthy body being attacked by an external agent. Yet, interactions of bodies, other bodies, microbes, architectures, cultural practices, technologies, and environments are intrinsically founded on continual contact, frictions, and encounters.
In the exhibition, existing works and new commissions enact, reclaim, or contest such zones of contact. In her coinage of the term, the linguist Mary Louise Pratt used the “contact zone” to counter the idea of community as a homogeneous, orderly entity, and think instead of social relations in terms of clashes and asymmetries of power. The artists on display all have long-standing practices that center queer and non-normative understandings of the body and of disease – which were all but ignored in the public debate on Covid-19.
In the exhibition, an extensive display of drawings and sculptures by the late Pepe Espaliú conjures forgotten histories of collective suffering. Pratchaya Phinthong and Işıl Eğrikavuk question the ways that epidemics and public health are narrated with respect to geographies of the "South."
Meanwhile, Himali Singh Soin and P. Staff suggest that contamination can be a counter-hegemonic act, while Monica Bonvicini challenges the architecture of gender with boldness and fragility. Three new commissions by visual artist Michael Wang and architects all(zone) and C+arquitectas (Nerea Calvillo with Manuel Alba Montes) re-enact the experience of contagion within flowering plants, domestic space, and the air itself.
During the summer, a series of film screenings, performances, and dialogues will be part of La Terraza Magnética to expand on the topics of the exhibition.
Curators: Ivan L. Munuera and Andrea Bagnato
Artists: all(zone), Monica Bonvicini, C+arquitectas (Nerea Calvillo with Manuel Alba Montes), Işıl Eğrikavuk, Pepe Espaliú, Pratchaya Phinthong, Himali Singh Soin, P. Staff and Michael Wang
Visual Identity: Omnigroup
Photographs: Guzman Infanzon / Begoña Solis / La Casa Encendida
More info: La Casa Encendida
