Semons nos resistances

MAIF Social Club

At a time when crises are multiplying, when dominant narratives lock down our horizons, and when the Earth's vital resources are being depleted, it is urgent to come together to build fairer and more sustainable models of life. It is this immediate, political and collective necessity that the fifteen artists presented in the exhibition Semons nos résistances explore. Institutional, economic and environmental violence reflects ambitions of control, exploitation and exhaustion of bodies, territories and imaginations. At a time when the predatory logics inherent to the neoliberal model, and the discourses of hatred that accompany them, keep intensifying, it is essential to oppose them with a firm refusal. Yet the possibilities of making oneself heard remain limited when citizens are relegated to the mere rank of spectators. How can we regenerate the desires for connection and action when our era produces competition and norms, and nurtures withdrawal into oneself and harmful affects, beginning with anger, resentment and fear? Where can we find the resources to emerge from the night? Struggles, in what they carry of the collective, of attentiveness to others, of joy and of desires for emancipation, seem capable of opening saving breaches through which light can once again pass, both within ourselves and within the structures of the established order. Even when occasional, minor or modest, acts of resistance help to rehumanize our presence in the world and the meaning of our interactions. As they multiply and connect with one another, they can transform into irresistible movements within which knowledge, hopes and experiences circulate, and where other forms of relationship and cooperation are shared. While struggle can take the form of demands and power dynamics, it also embodies itself in transgression, in the attention paid to vulnerability, in the recognition of one's own privileges, in the deconstruction of toxic narratives, or indeed in stories shared and passed on. Empathy, attentiveness, imagination and care then become subversive forces, capable of fueling profound individual, collective, societal and environmental transformations. What remains is to invent the paths, practices and horizons to begin this collective rebirth. Through the presentation of the work of fifteen artists, the exhibition Semons nos résistances celebrates these actions that sow the seeds of a joyful dissidence in the service of other ways of inhabiting the Earth, attentive to living beings and to otherness. More than that, it is an invitation to come together to invent, collectively, the world we wish to see emerge.

Source: Paris Open Data ↗