Existence/Resistance

Existence/Resistance
curated by Giovanna Maroccolo and Patrick L. Jaimes


Exhibition promoted by Fusion Art Center as part of the international conference "The Emergence of the Animal in the Contemporary World: Trust and Distrust in Times of Crisis", 9/10/11 June 2022, jointly organised by Bergische Universität Wuppertal and Universidad Andina Simón Bolivar.



Critical text by Giovanna Maroccolo

The title of the exhibition 'Existence/Resistence' coagulates in two key terms the slogan 'Respect Existence or Expect Resistance', written on the walls and shouted in the streets to express all the anger and determination of the people at the time of the civil rights movements, to arouse public indignation, raise awareness and awaken support. It is a proposal for an alternative but it is also a threat, on the one hand it invites awareness, empathy and respect for life, on the other hand it communicates that the time of pacifist passivism is over and that we have reached that limit beyond which the only solution left is outside the law. In the title, the two words of the slogan represents the coexistence of the two meanings.

"Existence" means art's attempt to re-signify non-human existence, to give value and space in the cultural and social debate to the silenced individuality of an entire class of individuals, the animals, through symbolic and metaphorical gesture. It acts through a decoded representation, most often breaking social dogmas, in the illegality of the margins of the dominant culture, in an attempt to originate new possible spaces and imaginaries. “Resistance” is the other side of the coin. While art seeks to weave new inclusive, just and empathic narratives, direct action and activism affect reality through the physical matter that constitutes it.
This exhibition intends to bring together in a single discourse the enormous cultural, social and material transformation required to dismantle the great trap of speciesism, which, on the one hand, is constructed by human thought and culture (whose tools include education, laws and the media) and, on the other hand, is realised through structures of exploitation and conviction of non-human animals such as farms, slaughterhouses, circuses, zoos and vivisection laboratories. A discourse that meanders between reflections on consumerism and its ethical implications, as well as on the political body of the animal seen in its reification but also in its capacity for self-determination, that shows us the alienation of the human being, incapable of relating to nature and to the other, that questions the valuation of life, human and animal, but above all asks us what we are willing to do, for its definitive liberation.
Thus, while art deals with unveiling the ethical and logical inconsistencies that hide behind the facade of sustainability built by the capitalist system, militant direct action cuts the chains, frees the animals, destroys the cages, sets fire to the slaughterhouses, takes over the walls and streets to reveal the truth that no one is yet able to hear. The slogan “Respect Existence or Expect Resistance” in this exhibition finally includes the last social category in the struggle for the total liberation necessary to dismantle the hierarchies and practices of domination on which the specist, classist, colonialist, patriarchal and racist system, against which this same slogan was created many years ago, is based.

Artists: Daniela di Maro (Italy), Enzo Calibè, Hartmut Kiewert (Germany), Isabella Pers, Kasia Oleskiewics (Polony), Laleh Montlagh (Iran / EUA), Patrick L.Jaimes (Mexico), Silvia Del Grosso (Italy), Tiziana Pers (Italy), Valerio Veneruso (Italy), Stefano Belacchi (Italy). 

Collectives: 269 Liberación Animal (France), DifusionV (Argentina), Resistenza Animale (Italy), ALF Animal Liberation Front (worldwide).