For the opening night of the exhibition ‘Axis/Mexico’ (San Diego Museum of Art, 2002), 

a video is presented of a curator reading a text while 

a person next to her catches fire, for no apparent reason

Para la noche de inauguración de la muestra Axis/Mexico

en el Museo de Arte de San Diego en 2002, se presenta el video de una curadora

leyendo un texto mientras a su lado un sujeto se enciende en llamas, sin motivo aparente.

 

 

History repeats itself, as do the forms of resistance to its difficult truths. In a seemingly neutral art-viewing setting, this video intervention destabilizes our perceptions of how events are represented by sublimating an extreme gesture into spectacle. When we see scenes of a body at risk what associations do we make? Do we search for reason?

 

 

Artigas capitalizes on our confusion. The inability to define the actions we witness as spontaneous human combustion or another act of martyrdom encapsulates the artist’s resistance to the notion of closure. There is no resolution. By staging this intervention, he centers, not the engulfed figure before us but, our varied sensitivities to the unending event. The work prompts an examination of our social body’s interrelations and (in)actions as we confront an isolated ruse that reflects a burning reality.

 

 

Here, the significance of this short video quivers in accordance with the persisting actions of global powers. Divisive in nature, these actions contribute to the continuous reshaping and manipulation of the video’s message. As contexts shift, wars are waged, and flesh incinerates, the interpretation of this work, even the efficacy of self-immolation, is drawn into disquiet.

 

 

In 2024, this 2002 work plays incessantly – 

an enduring commentary on our contemporary strife.

 

 

 

2024. Text by Lekha Jandhyala. @__lekha.j