Linguistic Ground Zero

With Linguistic Ground Zero, João Louro delves deeper into his favourite subject matters – the “atomic energy” of the written word, the literary construction as a weapon capable of opening a crack in the visual field – and confronts them with a return to the political instinct of artistic vanguards. By addressing the idea of imminent destruction without ever referring to any current affair, the artist simply reminds us of art’s inherent universality, and the non-normative manner in which that immanence can lead us to action and to become vigilant in a critical way. The atomic bomb which João Louro recreates in great detail is the first historical artifact to prove the possibility of mass annihilation. Like a sculptural piece recorded with the urgency of words, its suspension a few centimetres above the ground in MAAT’s Project Room tells us, silently, everything that needs to be said about the anxiety of the present moment.