“My Atlas” – texte (2025) [eng]

“MY ATLAS” is a new body of work developed over the past two years, that I am now exhibiting for the first time this November at the Helga de Alvear Museum of Contemporary Art in Cáceres, Spain. It is a work that I decided to conceive following my extensive conversations with Sandra Guimarães, Curator and Director of the Museum, as a response to her invitation to work out an ‘Anthological-Exhibition’ with some early works never shown before. “MY ATLAS” is therefeore the closest and also newest and most actual form that I though of. Twenty years a go, I made a first anthological attemp with the exhibition “Anschool” at the Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht and “Anschool II” at Museum Serralves, Porto in 2005. Besides, since the art historian Lisa Lee was finishing her book “Thomas Hirschhorn: From Graphic Design to Art” (The MIT Press, 2025), I thought it was the right moment for marking my own way, for drawing my own plan and for doing my very own Atlas.“MY ATLAS” is a work inspired by Aby Warburg’s ‘History of Art without words’ and his “Mnemosyne Atlas”. I love that Aby Warburg freed the academic field of art history from its rigid categories and chronological constraints. I love that he gave his work such a genius, powerful, audacious and universal form. Therefore, it encouraged me in doing “MY ATLAS” and provoked me to take over parts of this form as a tribute, but also as a re-interpretation of what an Atlas, my own Atlas, is – and even what an Atlas, our Atlas could be. The form of “MY ATLAS” wants to define the logic of my work and its developments through a series of vertical panels made of documents, pictures, drawings, sketches, references and original works, sometimes accompanied by a display case (with original works) or by works hung directly on the wall or placed the floor. If there are a few texts, they are integrated as documents. These panels are predetermined 2.40 m high, 1.60 m wide, 10 cm thick, built with cardboard coated with black tape. “MY ATLAS” will be initiated in Cáceres with 43 panels (actually 45 numbered 43 with 2 double-panels), following the idea that this body of work will expand in the future, but can also be shown in separate parts, or even just one panel. What characterizes “MY ATLAS” is that it remains non-chronological, infinite, evolving, and open to completion, by me and I hope by those looking at it. The aim of “MY ATLAS” is an assertion of what is to be seen and what is given to be seen. “MY ATLAS” is conceived as a manifesto stating what an artist – here myself – can do, what kind of vocabulary and thematics can be developed, which materiality can be used, what dimensions can be challenged, and what form can be given. The panels have no texts (apart some few exceptions), they do not answer the question ‘why ?’, there are no explanations, no captions, no chronological indication other than a number, because I want to leave room for creating connections, for dynamics, amplifications, tensions, pendular movements, juxtapositions, polarities, concentrations, radiations, and inverted energetics. I structured the panels in 3 categories: 1. ‘Developments’, as for example from the works in ‘cahiers’ (notebooks) to the wall, the use of fabrics or displays to present one single piece, or from one single piece of work to a constituted assemblage of works. 2. ‘Thematics’, as for example the technique of Collages, the use of ‘Tears’, or of ‘Subjecters’. 3. ‘Single Works’, as for example “Power Tools”, “Crystal of Resistance” or “Fake it, Fake it- Till you Fake it”. My intention with “MY ATLAS” is already present in its title with “MY” and “ATLAS”, which consists in confronting ‘The Self ‘(MY) with ‘The World’ (ATLAS). Simone Weil was aware and taught us that “The World” and “The Self” can never truly unite, that there is always a gap, a hole, even an abyss between them. Therefore, wishing that besides “The Self”, “The World” didn’t exist, would mean wanting to be “The Self”, alone. And nothing is more narcissistic and banal than believing that the world revolves around oneself – around “The Self”. Therefore, I see my mission as cultivating the force-field between “The Self” and “The World,” and transforming it into my form-field. If – what I believe – Art is a tool, then “MY ATLAS” should represent a form of this tool. A tool to grasp, to intervene and to struggle in the world with all its incommensurable contradictions and immense exaggerations. A tool which shows my mission, my role, my position as an Artist of today. With “MY ATLAS” I want this to be clear, committed and – above all – visible.

Thomas Hirschhorn, 2025