HOW ELSE CAN I SERVE YOU?

EN QUE MAS PUEDO SERVIRLE?

PERFORMANCE BY RACHEL LOBA ROBLES 

"The notion of things-in-itself doesn’t exist, everything boils down to interpretation. Hegel neglected his defense of the “Phenomenology of Spirit” –which contains the questionable chapter “Independent and Dependent Self-Consciousness: Lordship and Bondage”– and took care of his young wife. By disregarding his brilliant philosophy, they both died of cholera.

In the 19th century, the vibrio cholerae bacillus made its way from the Ganges delta into all continents. The same thing happened with the pandemic that ultimately justified capitalism, which Alexandre Kojève, Kandinsky’s godson, ideologically analyzed in his interpretation of Hegel’s "master-slave dialectic", prompting a debate on the complex relationship between the people who dominate and the submissive.

Marisa Caichiolo presents an association of elements –the banquet silverware, the woman (represented in Rachel Loba Robles’ image), and the red writing– weaving the story and redefining it by using her own hair. With this series, she proposes a new power dynamic: it's not about a symbolic boot that crushes, but an artistic subtlety that emancipates.

The structure and the visual rancor of the room at Madrid's Athenaeum become the stage to showcase that the connection between submission and rebellion can escalate to a true unstable confrontation in an evident cultural dispute. “How else can I serve you?”, superior in voice and height, comes to question such troubled relationships, establishing that servitude and the anthropological myth of the joy in dominance no longer exist.

"More Blood", presented on a silver platter, recreates Kojève's dialogue with Raymond Aron about the 1960s Parisian protests: "How many are dead?" asks the Russian. "None," responds the author of "The Opium of the Intellectuals". To which Kojève stated: "Then nothing happened in France in May 1968."

The power relation in the pieces cancels the typical coercion of those who take refuge in the belligerence of an ideology. This gives way to a mental reflection that, in its harmony and meticulousness, with the same beautiful and natural feminism the artist has portrayed before, persuades viewers not to do things against their will.

Dictatorial and repressive regimes, products of an imbalance between wisdom and human compassion, only strengthen criminal complicity in their modern versions of seduction, acceptance and exclusion... To that, Caichiolo says "No" and, from each capillary calligraphy in the artwork, her deep analysis in "How else can I serve you?" is precisely what dismantles repression, abuse and domination". Rael Salvador, Art Writer , Mexico, 2019.