Les faits sont têtus

In 1951, with Europe still managing its own ruins, Hannah Arendt warned us in "The Origins of Totalitarianism" that the ideal subject for totalitarian domination was not the follower or fanatic of a cause, but rather the one for whom there is no longer a distinction between fact and fiction, between true and false. Seven decades later, in most media outlets and in many political analyses, the use of concepts such as fake news, alternative facts, or post-truth punctuates our everyday lives through a constant carousel of statements in which both sides accuse each other of muddying reality with lies and nonsense. In Alán Carrasco's work, there is a specific interest in unraveling some of the strategies and traps commonly employed in the construction of official narratives, but also in finding the invisible threads, sometimes casual, other times plausible, that complicate the directional and linear reading intended to be provided of historical facts. In the selection of works presented in the exhibition Les faits sont têtus, some of the stratagems used to construct a significant part of the historical-political, institutional, and symbolic narrative of the 20th century are confronted. Alán Carrasco composes with his pieces an itinerary in which he does not hesitate to challenge some of the foundational myths of that discourse, using as raw material documents and other tangible evidence of the events that inspire him.

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