Cristina Lucas. E-conmotion

Cristina Lucas (Jaén, 1973) explores the power structures that shape our collective history and its relationship with art through the industrial revolutions that, while they arose in the West, transformed relations with the East and the South to establish new forms of power and submission and reconfigure societies and subjects. Lucas’ work sets out from the conviction that all art is political, like Rancière or Jaar, for whom images play an active part in configuring the world.

The exhibition is approached as a journey through the four industrial revolutions that, since the 18th century, transformed the economy, culture and forms of colonialism. The first Industrial Revolution, based on coal, ushered in the era of the steam engine and the mass move from countryside to town. The second, dominated by oil, consolidated global capitalism and placed energy at the centre of geopolitics. The third, linked to Silicon Valley, brought in the digital paradigm and control of data as a new form of power. The fourth, centring on artificial intelligence, involves far-reaching changes in subjectivity, ethics and the notion of humanity, in which the self becomes public, massive and hypervisual.

Lucas invites us to observe that technical and economic progress is not neutral, but a symbolic and material battleground. She uses triptychs made from the materials of each revolution—coal, oil, silicon, microchips—to construct a material narrative of history. The piece El anciano de los días (W. Blake) [The Old Man of Days (W. Blake)] opens the exhibition space with a blast of steam, and the audiovisual installation Chain Reaction Belt provides a brief history of anthropocentrism. The exhibition is in partnership with the Fundación Ventós, which creates smells to accompany the works, so that the idea of revolution is carried over into the sensory, emotional area of olfactory memory.

Cristina Lucas, El anciano de los días (W.Blake), 2025