Cristina Lucas. E-conmotion

Cristina Lucas (Jaén, 1973) explores the structures of power that shape our collective history and its relationship with art through the industrial revolutions, which, despite having emerged in the West, transformed relations with the East and the South, establishing new forms of power and subalternity, and reconfiguring societies and subjects.

Lucas's work starts from the conviction that all art is political, in tune with Rancière or Jaar, for whom images actively participate in the configuration of the world.

The exhibition is presented as a journey through the four industrial revolutions that, since the 17th century, have transformed the economy, culture and forms of colonialism.

The First Industrial Revolution, that of coal, inaugurated the era of the steam engine and the mass migration from the countryside to the city. The Second, dominated by oil, consolidated global capitalism and placed energy at the centre of geopolitics.

The Third, linked to Silicon Valley, established the digital paradigm and data control as a new form of power.

The Fourth, centred on artificial intelligence, introduces profound transformations in subjectivity, ethics and the notion of humanity, in which the self becomes public, massive and hyper-visual.

Lucas invites us to observe that technical and economic progress is not neutral, but a field of symbolic and material dispute.

Based on triptychs made of methacrylate formed by the materials of each revolution — coal, oil, silicon, microchips — she constructs a material narrative of history. The piece El anciano de los días (W.

Blake) will open the exhibition space with a steam pipe, and the audiovisual installation Cinturó de reacció en cadena will offer a brief history of anthropocentrism.

The exhibition has the collaboration of the Fundació Ventós, which creates scents to accompany the works, so that the idea of revolution will be transferred to a sensory and emotional space as olfactory memory.