Hydrarchy
Publisher: Gasworks
Published: 2010
Description: Mathieu K. Abonnenc
Goldin+Senneby
Laura Horelli
Melanie Jackson
Anja Kirschner and David Panos
Paul McCarthy
Uriel Orlow
Femmy Otten
Christodoulos Panayiotou
João Pedro Vale

Hydrarchy: Power and Resistance at Sea* is a group exhibition that approaches historical and contemporary examinations of the sea and the offshore as contested cultural, political, legal and socio-economic territories. Focusing on specific events, situations and mythologies attached to past and recent maritime history, the works address power relations at sea and the forms of resistance and survival developed as a response.

Hydrarchy: Power and Resistance at Sea brings together artists whose work explores themes encompassing colonialism and the slave trade, commerce, sea tourism and offshore finance, as well as maritime folk history, piracy and the proverbially tyrannical figure of the captain. While not always explicitly referenced in the works, the ship, as the ultimate container and enabler of these activities, histories and relations, stands as the unifying element of the exhibition.

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