Artists

Susana Pilar Delahante Matienzo

Press release

For her exhibition Achievement at the Secession, Susana Pilar Delahante Matienzo has developed a new installation, a performance, and an intervention into the building. All three works articulate feminist, anti-racist, and anti-colonial counter-visions, turning the spotlight on the achievements of Black women and championing a form of healing.

In the Graphic Cabinet, the artist presents what appear to be historic black-and-white photographs in a staged archive room, a kind of theatrical setting that evokes the atmosphere of a forgotten storage space. The small-format photographs are stuck between the shelves and in cabinets. The visitors become actively involved in the mise-en-scène as they explore the ostensible archive containing an individual’s personal effects, opening drawers, touching and contemplating photographs. All pictures present empowered Black women achieving freedom, justice, development, joy, and much more. Their attire dates the sitters to between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. Only the captions gradually reveal that the unfailingly realistic motifs must have been generated using artificial intelligence: the texts are descriptive instructions on what to depict as well as how.