Solo Exhibition
From Mars to Venus
13a Biennal d’Art Leandre Cristòfol
Curated by María Íñigo Clavo and Christian Alonso
La Panera, Lleida, Spain
19.10.2024 — 02.02.2025
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From Mars to Venus brings together works by artist and researcher Ignacio Acosta untangling politics of representation, extraction and resistance across two seemingly distant geographies: Sápmi in northern Sweden, home to the Sámi people; and the Atacama Desert and Andes Mountains region in Chile. The expansion of mining projects in these regions already affected by anthropogenic climate change has led to a rise in social, environmental, and economic injustices. Faced with the sustained violence that mining exerts on bodies and ecosystems, the exhibition brings these distant regions into dialogue with each other through their diverse strategies of resistance, highlighting the determination of Indigenous and local people to maintain their knowledge, traditions, and ways of life in increasingly fragmented territories.
In ancient cosmology, planets and minerals have long been associated with alchemical traditions, astrology, and symbolic correspondences. Mars is symbolized by iron, while Venus is associated with copper. In this work, Sápmi where the majority of the iron is mined in Europe, becomes Mars; and the Atacama-Andes region, where the largest amount of the world’s copper is produced, becomes Venus. Mars and Venus; iron and copper—like yin and yang, opposites but interconnected.
Rooted in an animistic belief that inanimate objects and places possess souls and agency, Acosta’s work envisions these distant territories rich in minerals and wisdom as connected bodies of knowledge. The exhibition begins with three video projects that highlight the role of social movements in refusing and contesting mining exploration ventures. Juxtaposing traditional knowledge with the scale of mining operations and the observation of space, the works consider the roles of technology and spirituality in resisting settler colonial exploitation, and open up ways of thinking and engaging with care-based community-led strategies of visibility and counter-surveillance.
Showed alongside these films are photographic installations, documents, objects and a video that reflect on the unequal geographical development of extractivism, zooming in on mining’s legal frameworks and the resultant loss of biodiversity and toxicity from resource extraction. Stemming from a practice grounded in rigorous research methodologies and long-standing collaborative processes, these works challenge the narrative of the so-called “green transition” while acknowledging these spaces as pluriversal and highlighting the importance of small community-run spaces of resistance forged in the confluence of feminist and queer activism.
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