Sassolino, Untitled, 2006-7, FKV
How interdependent are power and violence? “Mechanisms of Power,” an exhibition now on display at the Frankfurter Kunstverein, exhibits the two as difficult to separate. The show brings together the work of Guatemalan artist Regina José Galindo and Italian based Arcangelo Sassolino.
A feeling of scepticism filled me prior to arriving, as I generally find myself annoyed with the seriousness, the borrowed importance and the deadening realism of political art. I also have a problem with art history’s tendency to reduce women to the naked body, whereas male artists are given the ability to show off their rational tools. While “Mechanisms of Power” includes all of the above, I must say that it made me feel strangely challenged, wondering if there are maybe some assumptions too comfortable living inside my own head.
Visually, the artworks of Regina José Galindo and Arcangelo Sassolino couldn’t be more different. Each artist has their own space in the gallery, creating a feeling of two separate solo exhibitions. “Each of the elements I utilise in my work are functional but put together they create an aesthetic,” Sassolino says of his mechanical and minimal installations. His work is huge in size as well as intensity and impact, with works including a stack of wood slowly bent and straightened, a set of glass bottles catapulted to the other side of the room and a dislocated claw of an excavator bouncing on a stone floor.
Sassolino, Purgatory, FKV
Sassolino, Afasia 1, 2008, FKV
Arcangelo Sassolino explains his intentions to physically and mentally bring the spectator into another level. Though safety measures have been implemented for physical protection, crashing bottles and scratching claws create an unpredictability of movement that proves psychologically unbearable.
Alternatively, Regina José Galindo’s art is an execution she arranges for herself, almost like a sacrifice. The artist’s work invites onlookers to gawk as she lies nude in the fetal position under a plexiglass dome. In order to fully comprehend this performance, viewers must familiarise themselves with the violent climate of Guatemala, which includes a 35 year-long civil war and continues today with startlingly high murder rates among women. Afterwards, it’s no longer her body there, it’s a corpse, and you as the onlooker are the one walking off.
Galindo, installation view, FKV
Galindo, Nadie atraviesa la región sin ensuciarse, 2015, FKV
Galindo, La verdad, 2013, FKV
Galindo’s performances tend to have a dramatic flair. One piece shows Galindo as anaesthetics are injected in her mouth while she recites testimonies of indigenous women from the genocide trial of 2013. As it becomes harder and harder to speak, the artist refuses to be silenced, much like the witnesses she references. “ESTOY VIVA” it says in capital letters at the entrance of the exhibition. Blood appears repeatedly in Galindo’s performances, underlining bell hooks’ exclamation: “Dead bodies do not bleed.” The artist herself says it’s meant “as a cleansing, after war.” The image of a martyr comes to mind, but Galindo says she has no intention of being neither an angel nor an activist. She is an artist.
In “Mechanisms of Power,” Galindo and Sassolino each explore the interaction between mind and body as well as the traces left behind by the perverse combination of power and violence. Their works are like an instrument with its strings wound too tight – neither are able to create harmony – and luckily for Galindo and Sassolino, they’re okay with that.
“Mechanisms of Power” is at Frankfurter Kunstverein until 17 May 2016