Artists: Claudia Martínez Garay, Hanna-Maria Hammari, Nona Inescu, Özgür Kar, José Montealegre, Dennis Siering
Exhibition title: Cassandra Complex
Curated by: Adriana Blidaru
Venue: basis, Frankfurt, Germany
Date: September 16 – December 4, 2022
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and basis, Frankfurt
If the climate crisis is humanity’s deadly disease, alienation is one of its many symptoms. The exhibition Cassandra Complex shows how the feeling of hu-man alienation is deeply interconnected with the climate crisis that we are experiencing. This theme overarches the exhibition through interdisciplinary artworks presented by six international artists. The artists depict different ways of highlighting or dealing with feelings of estrangement and anxiety. Their valuable contributions support Cassandra Complex’s thesis that aliena-tion is a universal human vulnerability that has the potential to become a rich terrain for transformative narratives. Throughout history, the concept of al-ienation became particularly well- known through Marxist theory. In Marxism, alienation is described as a feeling of estrangement derived from the division of class and labor. This feeling reinforces the increasingly mechanistic role that individuals have had in society since the rise of Industrialism. Later on, Theodor W. Adorno, one of the foundational thinkers of the Frankfurt School, proposed that the cause of alienation—although an intrinsic characteristic of human nature—was propelled by the Enlightenment period. As we know now, Enlightenment and colonization have been two deeply interconnected pro-cesses that followed a logic of complete domination of nature by humans. The violent and murderous process of colonization—which still unfolds to-day—forced out peoples, rituals, Indigenous technologies, and mythology, in favor of western technology, rationality, and Christianity. Underestimating what it did not understand, the entire structure of Western power and wealth has been built upon this. If we fast-forward to the present, with the development of the comforts brought by global capitalism and that of technology, humanity’s alienation from nature deepened so greatly that it has become a self-destructive force.
Through a bird’s eye view, Cassandra Complex offers a subversive allegory for this collective alienation. Throughout the exhibition, the artworks depict through different strategies and mediums, how alienation is embodied and, in some cases, how it came to be. Thus, the works of the six artists could be seen as arguments in a larger thesis. José Montealegre and Claudia Martínez Garay highlight through their interdisciplinary practices a type of alienation resulting from the greed for economic dominance and exploitation by Eu-ropean Colonial expansion in the Americas and, respectively, the enormous and ongoing influence that Indigenous knowledge has had on Europe. Nona Inescu and Hanna-Maria Hammari depict an alienation from nature by tapping into a post-anthropocentric uncanny, where organic and inorganic forms intertwine, offering potential solutions to break the patterns of dualis-tic thinking. Investigating the existential fear of death, Özgür Kar taps into a deep-rooted alienation that rises from humanity’s inability to accept death and decay as part of life, a condition heightened by the development of tech-nology. Through his sculptural installation, Dennis Siering, depicts an alienation resulting from the toxicity of extractive industries and the insatiable desire to dominate and control resources.
Together, the works in the exhibition highlight the idea that social and environmental struggles are deeply interrelated throughout the complexity of history. Cassandra Complex finds common ground in this alienation to consider where our inability to act derives from, and to propose that critical thinking, radical empathy, communal reflection and action, present new ways of facing and dealing with the climate crisis.
The exhibition is curated by Adriana Blidaru, guest curator of the AIR_Frankfurt curator-in-residence programme of 2022.
Installation view “Cassandra Complex”, 2022, photo: Nathalie Zimmermann, © basis e.V.
Claudia Martínez Garay, Hombre que vas a la Luna sin conocer bien la Tierra, 2021, installation view basis e.V., Courtesy of GRIMM, Amsterdam | New York, photo: Nathalie Zimmermann, © basis e.V.
Claudia Martínez Garay, I WILL OUTLIVE YOU, 2017, installation view basis e.V., Courtesy of GRIMM, Amsterdam | New York, photo: Nathalie Zimmermann, © basis e.V.
Claudia Martínez Garay, Qanchis Pacha and Isqun Pacha, 2021, installation view basis e.V., Courtesy of GRIMM, Amsterdam | New York, photo: Nathalie Zimmermann, © basis e.V.
Dennis Siering, Speculative Landscapes_Prototypes for a Second Nature, 2022, installation view basis e.V., Courtesy the artist, photo: Nathalie Zimmermann, © basis e.V.
Dennis Siering, Speculative Landscapes_Prototypes for a Second Nature (Detail), 2022, installation view basis e.V., Courtesy the artist, photo: Nathalie Zimmermann, © basis e.V.
Hanna-Maria Hammari, Untitled (Screen), 2022, installation view basis e.V., Courtesy the artist, photo: Nathalie Zimmermann, © basis e.V.
Hanna-Maria Hammari, Untitled (Screen) (detail), 2022, installation view basis e.V., Courtesy the artist, photo: Nathalie Zimmermann, © basis e.V.
Hanna-Maria Hammari, Untitled, 2022, installation view basis e.V., Courtesy the artist, photo: Nathalie Zimmermann, © basis e.V.
José Montealegre, Las Páginas, 2021, installation view basis e.V., Courtesy the artist and MOUNTAINS, Berlin, photo: Nathalie Zimmermann, © basis e.V.
José Montealegre, Las Páginas, 2021, installation view basis e.V., Courtesy the artist and MOUNTAINS, Berlin, photo: Nathalie Zimmermann, © basis e.V._01
José Montealegre, Las Páginas (detail), 2021, installation view basis e.V., Courtesy the artist and MOUNTAINS, Berlin, photo: Nathalie Zimmermann, © basis e.V
Nona Inescu, Sphagnum (This Compost), Drosera capensis and Drosera rotundifolia, 2021, installation view basis e.V., Courtesy SpazioA, Pistoia, photo: Nathalie Zimmermann, © basis e.V.
Nona Inescu, Venus Trap (Dionaea muscipula), 2021, installation view basis e.V., Courtesy SpazioA, Pistoia, photo: Nathalie Zimmermann, © basis e.V.
Özgür Kar, Good Night, 2021, installation view basis e.V., Courtesy the artist, photo: Nathalie Zimmermann, © basis e.V.