LA MAYOR EMERGENCIA

In the 21st century, military occupations, neoliberal finance and technological surveillance have dramatically intensified to the point of creating a condition in which “the greatest emergency is the absence of emergency.” This theory of emergency does not imply that a crisis such as the coronavirus or the wars in Ukraine and Gaza are not fundamental emergencies that we must continue to confront at all levels. It simply requires that we avoid pretending that these are unpredictable events that we did not know would occur. The coronavirus, for example, was for many years a major “missing” emergency, as sociologists, scientists and international organizations had been warning for decades of the threat of a pandemic flu that eventually became an emergency. The same is now true of air pollution, which is responsible for the deaths of seven million people each year. The more absent an emergency, the greater it is.

This exhibition presents works of art by Timo Aho, Diane Burko, Arturo Comas, Gabriel Barcia-Colombo, Beverly Fishman, Julia Galán, kennardphillipps, Josh Kline, Filippo Minelli, Pekka Niittyvirta, and Avelino Sala who seek this experience and demand public intervention in global emergencies—climate change, increasing inequality, gender violence, whatever has been concealed by the rhetoric of power—that are concealed in the idea of their absence.