In her Introduction to the Third World, artist Marilá Dardot exercises a poetic tradition that claims the museum as its expressive medium. Her installation literally turns museographic devices inside out, by inviting the public to take a walk behind self-supporting walls, converting storage boxes in showcases, and treating that which would be contingent as a constitutive part of that which is contained.
By making use of these institutionalized structures and codes of exhibition, Introduction to the Third World reframes the work of other contemporary artists as clues to the reality of a fictional archipelago, neighboring New Atlantis, which exists in a permanent state of rediscovery.
This absurd appropriation of the modus operandi of science and natural history museums as a narrative format underscores how these devices – imperial devices par excellence – participate in the rationalization of worlds they are not fully able to comprehend. At the same time, the appropriation reclaims classification processes as a creative gesture able to produce affinities and traffic meanings.
Instead of depleting taxonomy from its powers, Introduction to the Third World reorients it towards fabulation. The museum’s organizational principle, normally deployed in favor of hierarchizing hierarchies and disciplinary segregation, is used to renovate a dated geopolitical concept as a fantastic territory, worthy of Borgean encyclopedias.