Rotating Rules

Modeka is pleased to present “Rotating Rules”, a group exhibition curated by Mariano Batocabe and featuring artists Angela Silva, Jef Carnay, Katherine Nunez, Mariano Matocabe, Mio Aseremo, Olive Gloria,
and Zeus Bascon.

Rotating Rules features artists of different persuasions, regions, and generations responding to the idea of instructions.

Largely prompted by the guidelines, protocols, and restrictions—either implemented on a national, domestic, or personal level—that we have all been following over the past year, the exhibition adopts a broad conceptual approach that goes beyond mere preventive measures.

Instructions set parameters—it delineates, delimits, and restricts. It may be compelling or provocative in its more imperative form. It may also suggest a sequence of “correct” actions and processes, which could then be legitimized, institutionalized, and reiterated in perpetuity as doxa. It disciplines and controls, both directly and indirectly.

Instructions appear in law, computer codes, recipes, sheet music, how-to guides, exams, and games, among many others. Instructions are omnipresent.

The word “instruction” is etymologically related to “build,” “construct,” and “structure.” Instructions can thus be seen as structural or structuring principles. But who gets to design and implement these principles? Who gets to set the terms and conditions?

Rotating Rules foregrounds the subject of power as its primary problem. The artists were prompted to think about how power and hierarchies articulate, and are articulated through, instructions—how are instructions formed, how do hierarchies come to be, and how do methods of control spread across different levels (e.g. global, social, psychological, etc.) and take other forms.

Artists interested in a wide range of practices and modes (e.g. performance, interactivity, process, technique, the everyday, the spiritual) were invited and encouraged to approach the subjects in any way they see fit—they could represent it literally or figuratively; allow their works to embody it through conceptual and process-based procedures; or explore it historically, semantically, and/or obliquely,

Through its title, Rotating Rules highlights the arbitrariness of instructions in a spatio-temporal and ludic manner: rules are eternal, ephemeral, recurrent, and recursive.

Rotating Rules is on view from May 27, 2021 – June 19, 2021. 

Explore the exhibition online on EXPERIENCES