João Louro At maat, lisbon

November 7, 2018

João Louro's solo project Linguistic Ground Zero is featured at MAAT (Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology), in Lisbon. Designed for the MAAT Project Room, Linguistic Ground Zero reflects on this moment of historical inflection in which art and society seem to be in agreement with the need to end everything. His proposal is a reproduction of "Little Boy" - the first atomic bomb in history, which devastated the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. As with most bombs, in which soldiers write messages, this reproduction also carries with it inscriptions - in this case, the texts refer to art, politics, culture and vanguards. 

The curator, David G. Torres writes, "João Louro's starting point is the relationship between the physical destruction caused by the atomic bomb and the symbolic destruction that is part of different avant-garde strategies." Louro establishes a confluence between the physical destruction caused by the atomic bomb and the symbolic destruction that is part of different strategies of art during these vanguards: a fascination shared by destruction, but also a desire for renewal, from the zero degree to which the title alludes. In this logic, the analogy of the title of the exhibition itself appears, which the curator considers perfectly and very clearly: "Linguistic Ground Zero is a bomb that represents the possibility of the destruction of the physical world, but this destruction also exists, precisely, in an attempt to reduce everything to the minimum, to try to carry out a new beginning, in the field of symbolism and communication, reducing the language to a zero degree; the bomb that explodes and destroys versus the destruction of language; the zero degree of the ground floor of Hiroshima versus the zero degree of language in a phonetic poem made of screams and noises. As part of the Linguistic Ground Zero research project, the exhibition also includes drawings and documents.

Linguistic Ground Zero was curated by David G. Torres.

The exhibition runs from Wed 7 Nov 2018 — Mon 22 April 2019.