Politics is mainly the activity of exerting or trying to influence the exercise of public authority. In other words, it is a power that alleges legitimacy because it acts on the people’s behalf. By contrast, the premise of counter-politics is that the monopoly of public power is a failure.

The inherent purpose of politics, be it real or imagined, is serving the people. However, it transforms into a new social order, into a “dark power” that appears as a new figure of public authority, that enables the emergence of illusions. Such is the case of Colombia, where the arrival of drug-trafficking money, with more liquidity than the government, made the fragile system go bankrupt.

Through this exhibition we intend to address the damage that this has produced on Colombian psychology, examining the objectual materialities of four artists from different generations and regions. All of them lived and built their practices under the counter-politics shadow. And this lack of legitimacy prompted intimate responses in them such as memory and pain, irony, and humor that they now express through their works.

Rafael Londoño, curator