08/03/2022
Empowerment is, by definition, “the process of gaining freedom and power to do what you want or to control what happens to you”. To do so, women should not settle only for exploiting the status quo. Progress requires a major rethink of the nature of the authority, what constitutes it and how we are used to perceive it. Not only women will have a role inside of the power, they might generate a redefinition of the concept of power itself. This installation represents the female condition in this precise turning point. There is a path in front of us, but it is full of obstacles, they are prejudices but also values that society has imposed on us and which we do not perceive as obstacles but as valid statements. We have a choice: either we can cross the room by crashing into any obstacle, painfully overcoming them without getting anything in return, or we can just explode them, one by one, until the street is all clear. This process, joined with the crucial oper- ation of changing the point of view, allows the individual and the collectivity to have the full vision of the global empowerment. We want to show that the space is soaked with obstacles, that they are in front of our eyes, obstruct our view and hit us in the face. Empowerment is everywhere in the room but you cannot have a full vision without exploding all the prejudices and all the preconceptions. Some things are hard, if not impossible, to cast off. We want to stress how terrifying is the extent to which the exclusion of women from power is culturally embedded, while also denouncing the classical ways of formulating and justifying it. We want the community to become aware and empathize with this issue and literally explode this system step by step.
Concept by Laura Petroncini and María D del Sol Ontalba
