Zoo + The Hegemonic Map + Anni di piombo

Zoo is a series of works that interweave maps of the European colonial processes of the 17th century and posters that analyze the historical and urban phenomenon of the human zoos housed inside Universal or Colonial fairs in different European and U.S. cities.
Serie Cartografía de la colonización-1670, is a Dutch world map printed and intervened with paint according to the process of expansion in America at that time. Lists of names of peoples exhibited in zoos 250 years later are superimposed on them. These lists were extracted from the research carried out on the phenomenon of zoos, in which 1300 human zoos were counted and documented between 1848 and 1958. Each map contains the shock of evidencing the processes of colonization, suprematism, and racism that resulted in human zoos.
Serie Zoológicos humanos-emplazamientos: Torino is part of the visual synthesis of the archival research conducted from the questions: how the spectacle of the human zoo had impacted the city where it was exhibited? what scenographic resources constituted the show? and how the idea of civilization and barbarism, progress and savagery, were the urban signs that the spectacle of the human zoo served to popularize in the different European cities and capitals where it was produced?. The construction of these signs was necessary for the process of colonial expansion supported by the construction of the homogenization of the white European race at the same time that racism was popularized.

The Hegemonic Map is part of a research project that originates in a question the artist seeks to answer: how is the modernist, Eurocentric and colonial gaze configured? The gaze that later expands from Europe to the USA and constructs a symbolic contempt that is imposed as political, cultural and economic subjugation in non-hegemonic regions?
To do so, the work seeks to rescue concepts coined from a Eurocentric perspective that shed light on the violence with which the world is reduced to an expansionist, developmentalist and hegemonic model.
The map depicts the European colonial hegemony worldwide. Only 9 countries in the world have been free from European domination: Bhutan, Ethiopia, Iran, Japan, Liberia, Mongolia, Nepal, North and South Korea and Thailand.

Anni di piombo (Years of Lead) is a compilation of unclassified files that evidences the secret plot coordinated by NATO and CIA commanders, who secretly acted at the end of World War II in order to neutralize the political left-wing forces in some European countries, as well as in other geopolitical regions.
The existence of Operation Gladio, a clandestine network operating in several European countries since the early 1950’s and coordinated by the supreme military command of NATO, is demonstrated through the selection of files of some intelligence agencies of France, Italy, Germany and Spain. According to numerous sources from the U.S. secret services, Gladio was born to create a resistance outline against a possible Soviet invasion of Western Europe -which never occurred.
In 1972, after the Peteano bombing in Italy, it was suggested that the extreme-left Red Brigades were responsible. While reopening the case twelve years later, however, Judge Felice Casson discovered a secret Italian military intelligence network (Gladio) that was linked to the right-wing terrorist, Vincenzo Vinciguerra. This secret service provided right-wing terrorists with explosives to carry out attacks against the Italian population in several cities.
Gladio (from Latin gladium, “short sword”), was a sort of communist anti-guerrilla. In the Italian secret services’ archives, it appears as a secret network linked to political destabilization actions including the murder of Aldo Moro in 1978, which is reported in CIA files, information highly censored by black lines.
Although Gladio’s presence is fully confirmed in many European countries, there are more unanswered questions than certainties about this mysterious organization, “illegal but legal”, according to some official sources.

Año:
Tipo de Investigación:
exhibición:

NOME Gallery at Artissima
INTERNATIONAL CONTEMPORARY ART FAIR

ciudad:
Turin
país:
Italy
Especificación:
  • 2021
    ZOO
  • Serie Cartografía de la colonización -1670
    (Colonization Cartography Series - 1670)
    Digital print, ink, colored pencils, and collage on polyester paper
  • Serie Zoológicos humanos-emplazamientos: Torino
    (Human Zoos Series - Locations: Torino)
    Fine art print on paper
  • 2022
    The Hegemonic Map
    Laser etched steel, brass and copper
  • 2022
    Anni di piombo
    (Years of Lead)
    Polyptych. 16 laser-cut acrylic plates, acrylic hinges and wooden structure
Tipo de proyecto:
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