ARTBO 2021

There are two themes that recurrently appear in Instituto de Visión’s exhibitions: on the one hand, the body and its political presence in history and on the other, territory. Both issues, equally important and transcendent, are analysed from different perspectives by the artists and, in each case, these approaches generate new directions from which to examine the scope of these two notions.

The name of this exhibition honors, in particular, the book by the Italian philosopher Silvia Federici, and in general, all her research on the historical, political, philosophical and social relationships between witch hunt and the origin of patriarchal capitalism.

According to the great Federici, patriarchal-capitalism is founded on the end of feudalism and is systematically generated from the persecution and violent killing of women from the 15th to the 17th centuries. According to her studies, it is through excessive violence, especially against women’s bodies, that triumphant capitalism has prolonged its regime to the present day.

Some of the things we owe to witch hunt are for example the gender division of labor, the centuries of lack of women’s intellectual participation in social and cultural life, and the thousands of almost invisible differences, inequalities and contempt that women face constantly.

When the economy ceases to depend on community action, and is based on the exclusive product of labor, bodies become production capital. Those who cannot work due to their conditions, such as women, children and the elderly, are left in the care of the state, which consequently acquires the power to administer them.

A parallel phenomenon happens with the territory. When people are exiled (emotionally and physically) from their territories to become labor and consumption subjects, the State seizes the lands, without taking into account the emotional and historical value that they possess. For the market, the land is seen as a value, not as a landscape, and much less as a living entity.

This exhibition seeks to raise different perspectives to look at reality outside the capitalist and patriarchal canons imposed by history.