General Interest (with Acaymo S. Cuesta), 2022
installation, wood, discarded materials and photographs, dimensions variable
production: CAAM, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain
curators: Blanka de la Torre and Zoran Erić
photos: artist
Canarian artist Acaymo S. Cuesta and Serbian artist Branislav Nikolić connected two regions where the project has been developed through a collaborative work making use of reused, recovered and discarded materials, mainly wood and other sorts of waste.
The installation seeks to establish bridges between the ecological problems of the islands and global ones, taking as its starting point the construction project of the Salto de Chira-Soria hydroelectric plant, whose controversy is dividing the citizens of Grand Canaria, alluding to the form of the architectural structure that crosses the space.
The artists suggest the danger of corporate imperialism that has been developing, especially in countries of the Global South, leading to the dispossession of communities of the First Nations and indigenous peoples and generating irreversible damage to the flora and fauna of the territory. This loss of diversity is also shown in the photographs found inside the room as a separate space created by the structure.
The artists thus appeal to the importance of global energy sovereignty away from the monopolies of power over resources, where the race for renewables runs the risk of falling into the hands of green capitalism, which perpetuates the concept of progress as infinite growth – a model that collides head-on with the limits of the biosphere.