#sademe

About

This exhibition refers to Donatien Alphonse François de Sade and its oblique influence on artistic practice.  Before “queer” became an academic and activist instrument to rewrite political and social relations based on marginalized forms of desire and sexuality, Sade proposed a total eroticization of the world with its infinite variations of violence and desire. The paradox of his contradictory status, between Revolution and Aristocratic libertinage, Liberty and Terror, actor and witness, takes the form of a literature as mirror games that reflect both the implicit and the explicit, blasphemy and euphemism. The proto-revolutionary figure, incarcerated most of his adult lifetime, created an inspiring analogy between act of resistance and work of art and asked whether true revolution comes from changing society or changing oneself.