Hidden behind the Arctic is a paradise

Museo de Arte Zapopan
Zapopan, Mexico

From May 15 to November 2, 2025.
Curator: Maya Renée Escárcega

Artists:
ASMA, Ramiro Ávila, Carolina Fusilier, Scott Galván, Joey Holder, Karla Kaplun, Xin Liu and Lucia Monge, Agnes Meyer-Brandis, Federico Pérez Villoro, Renata Petersen, Larissa Sansour, Lino Vite, The Institute of Queer Ecology

An Eastern legend held that the earth lay on the back of a whale, supported in turn by a bull, which in turn stood on a rock, and that this was supported by dust, beneath which no one knew what lay, except the immense sea of infinity. (Umberto Eco, History of the Earth and Legendary Places , 2013).

“Flowers are blooming in Antarctica, and this is seriously worrying scientists,” read the headline of a news article. The collective imagination was swept away by a sense of horror, yet simultaneously captivated by the aesthetic pleasure of seeing a purple Saxifraga oppositifolia amidst the frost. Edmund Burke's vision of the sublime crumbled once we realized the news was false. Tundra moss and the flora that thrives in extreme conditions are not a product of the Anthropocene: they have always been there and are surviving the cataclysm alongside all other species.

In the same vein, it has been erroneously taught since the 19th century that medieval thought conceived of the Earth as a disc or a dome, known as the "Flat Earth Myth." Columbus and his contemporaries conceived of a spherical Earth: they knew what they were doing .

Thus, the flat-Earth theory serves as an allegory for access to information in times of political polarization. The alternative to questioning scientific paradigms, as well as the institutions that fund research with economic and political interests, is to adopt theological dogmas or esoteric traditions. When the spherical model becomes a nightmare and its wall a symbol of the global migration crisis, the flat-Earth model presents itself as a dream. At the edge of the disc, its ice wall prevents the sea from overflowing into the cosmic abyss and stands as a promise of another possible Earth, a park with abundant fruit.

This exhibition presents imaginative representations of an alternate present and a possible future based on fictional cartography. It explores the flat-Earth perspective from its poetic and political potential, while also allowing us to question the sources of our knowledge and find meaning in fallacy, situated knowledge, ancestral memory, and magic. How can we validate forms of knowledge found in the supernatural, superstition, mythology, ritual, and religious mysticism without condoning theological dogma and sectarian co-optation?

The exhibition unfolds within an expanded epistemological field, where ways of knowing, believing, and imagining intertwine. Through humor, critical thinking, and posthumanist visuality, the works reflect on the construction of worlds and the apprehension of knowledge on platforms that transcend the traditional school setting. Through artistic practices rooted in technoscientific research and knowledge, as well as in the literary and cinematic genre of science fiction, these digressions and shifts allow for a rethinking of notions of landscape, migration, and hybrid identities through speculation and political imagination, paving the way for both ecological utopias and dystopias.

At the same time, they allow us to explore the appeal of cults and the potential of conspiracy as an alternative to the path proposed by modern science, while questioning “conspirituality”: How does one go from New Age to (eco)fascism*?

Key figures in authoritarian regimes combined alternative medicine practices and organic diets, conspiracy theories, concepts from Hinduism, and esoteric and mystical beliefs, such as astrology, dowsing, and parapsychology, in their ideology to justify their supremacist ideas.