This curatorial selection is based on pieces that through gestures, evocations or representations displace the meaning of some of the conceptual pillars of the prevailing economic model.

Many of the works that were chosen open to discussion terms like: productivity, utility, productive hours, benefits, optimization, informal economies and exchange value. Included within this first thematic axis, are pieces that destabilize production processes or economic exchange, thus bringing up issues on the usefulness and exchange value of goods, private property, authorship, public space and dissent.

Through other works in the selection, one can reflect on the role that the economy and its construed relationships play in the constitution of an individual. This second axis is articulated with reference to the methodology of German artist August Sander, who for several years of his life built a photographic catalog of German society during the Weimar Republic. The categories chosen by the artist contain information that exemplifies how the organization of a society affects the construction and identity of the individual.

The last thematic axis challenges the logic of “productivity” within the capitalistic economic model, where reflection, thought and imagination are relegated for having, apparently, no “useful” qualities. Under this scheme, the way in which time is considered exemplifies the arbitrary division between “productive hours” and “leisure time”, sharply references those moments which are destined to productivity as to the moments destined to consumerism.

Following this line of reasoning, it begs the question: Are reflection and understanding considered work? Are they productive? Or are they part of what should happen during leisure time, when we allow ourselves to dream, imagine and satiate those desires through consumerism?

The artist’s work is exemplary in thinking about these these issues, because his job is not to produce objects, but to produce meanings, knowledge and understanding. The language used to communicate these may take on the form of a video, a performance, a book or a sculpture, but its main function is to ask questions and make visible the invisible. The object chosen to communicate this is the instrument.

Beneath these three broad axes, the intention of this curatorship is to demonstrate the importance that all activities that defy capitalist logic have in the constitution of the individual (and of society). And, because only through the displacement of meaning and certainty, the possibility of building other worlds can be glimpsed.

• Curatorship: Bárbara Cuadriello
• Artists: Eduardo Abaroa, Francis Alÿs, Diane Arbus, Larry Clark, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Carolina Esparragoza, Claire Fontaine, Janine Gordon, Sigurdur Gudmundsson, David Hammons, Susan Hiller, Fritzia Irízar, Toril Johannessen, William Kentridge, Cristina Lucas, Gordon Matta Clark, Cildo Meireles, Esteban Pastorino, Irving Penn, Sebastiao Salgado, Santiago Sierra, Wolfgang Tillmans.
• First curatorship for CIAC’s office, 2014
• Consulate General of Mexico in Montreal, Canada from December 15, 2015 to February 27, 2016