We have transited for more than 2020 years on Earth and have always done this hoping for a better world, have advanced between absurd wars and devastating pandemics, have been on the verge of collapse, and have moved on; however, we haven’t been able to balance justice to feel proud that every individual lived with wellness and dignity that through humanity and law deserves.

 

In this universe saturated with fake and truthful news, surrounded by images and panaceas that cynically offer eternity, wisdom and beauty, today we face again the dilemma of insecurity and anxiety before a pandemic (even without clear dimensions of its consequences); as a result – it is said with insistence – of a corona virus1 (COVID-19) which from a distant and forgotten Chinese town (Wuhan) spread unbelievably easy towards everywhere on Earth.

 

A viremia that showed us how unprotected and indifferent we are before situations foreseen time ago, those which their reach was underestimated, and that reveals our insignificance toward nature overturned by ourselves. A pandemic that shows our predator and stubborn conduct that uncovers impotence and weakness, and discovers the unconceivable indolence to everything that apparently matters to us.

 

Despite everything, the generous human side flourishes, those who give everything to change this disaster appear, and even when most of us have done very little or nothing to palliate this calamity, and the ignorance, arrogance, and power try to darken hope; the survival spirit keeps us alert and worried, it exhorts and commends us to take responsibility of our actions at the same time, to try to change the paradigm.

 

Without turning into apologia the good intentions, the purpose of those who have organized this show:  Breathe then Exist, in order to respond from the creative pretext with a piece –the mask- today yet emblematic for its visual globalization rather than its imponderable epidemiologic value; the result is a central idea that makes it possible to potentiate its qualities, and above all to be conscious about the relevance of its use.

 

The mask, nothing new, an old artifact that, quoting William Summers (2012)2, its use dates the middle ages when this was used during the Bubonic plague, elaborated like strange masks in the form of a bird’s peak containing aromatic herbs in the interior to protect the user from the nauseating odor from the infected people and the thousands of deaths in the city; besides, considered an infallible resource to alienate unknown malefic influences, and  without knowing we assume, they were protected to a certain extent from the contagious consequences.

 

It won’t be until the XVIII, with the identification of microbes by the Dutch Leeuwenhoek and the emergence, in the following century, of germs’ theories which Robert Koch would explain the transmittable mechanisms of infections that the masks would appear in surgical rooms.  Its public use would be seen during the Great Manchuria Plague in 1910, with the apocalyptic deaths of almost one hundred percent of the infected (Lynteris, 2018)3.

 

Wu Lien Teh, Malaysian doctor  and educated in Cambridge, traveled to Manchuria looking for convincing his colleagues that the plague, besides transmitted by the sting of infected flees, it could be transferred by air, this was an innovative and scandalous statement  that implied the use of masks for the prevention, and that it would be rejected.  Despite the enormous risk of contagion, there was a great resistance to be used by the traditionalistic population who did not accept the indication from the medical science, and the negligence by the Chinese government to divulge the necessary use of these garments, which at that time was fighting together with the Japanese and Russians the territory of Manchuria.

 

The death of his French colleague Gérald Mesny as a consequence of the infection that he acquired few days after visiting a hospital without protection, the news was spread in the press together with Edward Hulton’s 4 photograph of the sanitary personnel wearing bandages covering their heads; the demand of masks, according to Lien The (2014)5  exploited “everybody was wearing them in the streets, of different forms”.

 

An analogy impossible to bypass with today’s pandemic that beats this ignorant, loud, and stubborn humanity, where apathy and ignorance have been the great protagonists of the outcome of this problem that together with oblivious governments, surpassed by a difficult to deny political-economical (dis)interest, have turned everything into a disaster.

 

However, the absence of memory also seems to be an inevitable ally to this crisis: the Spanish Flu that devastated the United States in 1918, SARS epidemy that whipped Hong Kong in 2002; Influenza H1N1 that lashed Mexico in 2009, Ebola epidemy in 2014 originated in West Africa, and a painful and long list of epidemics and pandemics, endured throughout history up to day, seem not to have been enough to understand the importance and the benefit of using these simple preventive objects.

 

Breathe then Exist is a collective-creative exercise which can well serve as prelude to the compromise that one must take to find solutions to disgrace like this and any other nature. It is a display that let us see the creative potential that before any circumstance explodes in a feast of forms and ideas, apparent in these pieces of diverse styles and nature which their singular support is the mask; a good pretext to reevaluate this garment, and with joyful concordance, one can assume, that these reproduced pieces show likewise  the complex idiosyncrasy that singles us out.

 

The exact title of the show: Breathe then Exist, which comes from the Latin “cogito, ergo sum” a philosophical approach by René Descartes (2009)6 that would become the cardinal element of modern western rationalism, and that will usually be translated as “think, then exist”7.  An affirmation that thinking is an irrefutable proof of the preexistence of self, and in this aesthetic exercise, when changing the concept from the cognitive (think) for the physiologic (breathe), it is also reassured the unquestionable functional act that sustains our existence.

 

However, out from the potentiality of the semantic field, multiple possibilities can be re-signified, and even from this conjuncture justify any aesthetic insight.  If breathing is fundamental to life, and a virus the cause of its difficulty that can take to death; a mask -which is not antiviral-,  reduces considerably its contagion, and makes life permanence possible; therefore the expression “breathe (wear a mask), then exist” proves appropriate and hopeful.

 

Pieces made under specific conditions as it is the voluntary reclusion at home as a consequence of the pandemic, made with conventional pigments and enriched with different materials (wood, metal, diverse objects), regularly recycled from their own dwellings; composed by figurative elements (most of them) and abstract; with representative, intimate, allegorical, playful, ironic and critical topics.  It results in a multi-referential spectrum that can well be assumed as a pertinent equivalence of what we are.

 

Upon the paradox of an object that many people still find it difficult to understand why and what for the necessity of its use, its use is obligatory established, and its image becomes viral (what an irony), and although it is incorrectly used (misplaced, dirty, over used, etc.), it almost becomes a cult to wear it. A paradigmatic reality that determines the temporality of before and after its use, and this project turned into an excuse for the creative outcome will transform itself into the corpus for the memory.

 

Even though Breathe then Exist is more than a justification to make evident leisure and its derivations, it is not a radical solution to the pandemic.  It is likewise difficult to imagine how much this generous project will contribute to make aware the relevance of the use of the mask; however, it cannot be denied the collaborative spirit that encourages itself and  it confers, I think it is an invaluable and also testimonial value as it shows where and how we can walk hand in hand to amend what we have done wrong.

 

A necessary responsibility, irrefutable that also obliges to measure the roll that art produced traditionally has played, walking closely with this vertical capitalism (which has been, from its immoral bases blinded by power and ambition, the consequence that this pandemic favors) serving as market supply as the overriding end; when the spirit that emanates, linked to the emotional, to dreams and hopes has the potential to take on other commitments that can contribute to be better than what we are, creating what our moral duty considers pertinent and not replicating what others say about what we have to do to be considered successful.  Maybe “walking with the devil” according to Gerardo Mosquera8 should be a pertinent route, in order to transform the hegemonic and restrictive situation of an active plurality, instead of being devoured by it.

 

I think, “after”, (from wearing the mask) a good opportunity to be even more accountable for our actions, but above all to demonstrate what we are like creatively in all capacities without being the eternal replica to deserve the right to act in a media circus that leads to stardom.

 

The old saying “every cloud has a silver lining”, must be accepted as a commitment without waiting for the divine to reward; admitting it as a challenge to show that our strengths are built freehand, and that we are able to overcome any calamity from respect to moral values, empathy, and good will, is perhaps the best choice.

 

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  Roberto Rosique

  Writer, researcher, visual artist, editor