Carlos Motta. Pleas of Resistance
By Charlotte Stace
MACBA’s new exhibition Pleas of Resistance journeys through more than 25 years of work by the Colombian artist Carlos Motta, whose art engages with the body and sexual dissidence as a terrain of experimentation and political contestation.
Bringing together his early self-portraiture with recent performances and video installations, the exhibition highlights Motta’s engagement with archives - examining their silences, violences and hidden desires. His work directly confronts Eurocentric epistemologies, tracing their impact from colonial conquests to the present, while also interrogating religion’s role in sustaining colonial oppression.
Beginning his career in the late 1990s before emigrating to New York, he has since been invested in political histories and social movements, particularly around sexuality, gender and the HIV/AIDS crisis. This exhibition foregrounds his commitment to the politics of care, self-representation and collective agency, offering a powerful meditation on the fragility of bodies and the resilience of communities.