The Geopolitics of Infrastructure. Contemporary Perspectives

Including: Tekla Aslanishvili, Mirwan Andan & Iswanto Hartono, Winnie Claessens, Köken Ergun & Fetra Danu, Köken Ergun & Tashi Lama, Assem Hendawi, Jean Katambayi, Pejvak, Shahana Rajani, Sojung Jun and Jonas Staal, amongst others.

Infrastructure is big ideas. It finds its purpose in facilitating the flows, exchanges and support structures that shape our lives, livelihoods and civilisations. It serves multiple purposes, including trade, transport, manufacturing, energy, communication and warfare, as well as key facets of the public sphere such as health, education, utilities and the arts—ultimately embodying a world in motion. Whether public, private or some hybrid of both, infrastructure projects have become potent symbols of modernisation, ambition, influence and power in many parts of the world.

Infrastructure is the current and future relation between things. The classical elements—earth, wind, water, fire—are exploited within overlapping jurisdictions, transnational circulation, rapid urbanisation, and the structuring of labour, exposing the landscape to complex geopolitics. Artists, through their practice, consider the political commitments, imagination, affect, and power relations inherent in infrastructure.

The exhibition The Geopolitics of Infrastructure  presents the work of a generation of artists bringing contemporary perspectives on the particular topicality of infrastructure in a transnational, geopolitical context.

_{Image: Tekla Aslanishvili. A State in a State, 2022. Video still. Courtesy of the artist.}