A Gesture Towards Transformation

As verbal communication is becoming less and less trustworthy – and one could say, purposely and progressively emptied out of meaning through politics and mass media – we search for meanings that lie elsewhere. How can we free ourselves from set definitions enforced by spoken language’s power structures? Beyond words, we find plenty of other forms of communication, such as sound, tone, gesture, movement, rhythm, resonance and the repetition of all of the above. They are essential to how we go through the world, arranging the space between ourselves and our others – our boundaries become relational, they touch and intersect.

Such ways of sensing and describing our circumstances become essential parts of our identities. This is how we relate to our surroundings, how we define ourselves in the eyes of others as well as to ourselves, thinking about the permeability of borders such as our skin. With A Gesture Towards Transformation, the gallery spaces become a territory encoding a multiplicity of identities and geographies, constantly shifting and moving.

Expanding the idea of the present, the works were conceived and enacted at various historical moments over the last two decades, and yet remain viscerally relevant to our current times. Carrying the potential for transformation and activism, rather than being directly reactionary to contemporary politics, they build a new language and meaning bottom up, and through their own logic. Rather than creating utopian or parallel circumstances, the works exist in this reality and articulate empowering statements.

--

Download Aimar Arriola's Keratin Manifesto here.