On the nocturnal and most delirious summit of imagination at Josilda da Conceição Gallery will present new works by the collective To See the Inability to See (Maartje Fliervoet, Martín La Roche Contreras and Arefeh Riahi). These pieces have evolved from their multidisciplinary project titled My Garden’s Boundaries Are the Horizon. This show further develops some of their previous ideas, more specifically around the theme of “refusal” as a form of resistance and creativity.

Refusal as an act of creation involves a genealogy of words. For instance,"waste," in relation to the Latin r-e-f-u-s, which means “to pour back”. Or the English word “refusal,” that was derived from “refus,” linking “waste” to “resistance”. And the word “derivative,” referencing leftovers, byproducts; remainders of a production process.

Each artist in the collective proposes new works that reflect on this terminology. Some directly, such as in the various Farsi synonyms for “refusal,” printed on Arefeh’s paper works that show the material’s resistance to her attempt at geometrically folding them into architectural shapes. Some indirectly, like in Martín’s derivative watercolours of replicas of items from David Wojnarowicz’ Magic Box, that expand on notions of personal archive, artists’ legacies and byproducts of an undefined creative process. In the case of Maartje’s leftover textile and indium pieces based on mine tailings and image production, “refus” and “refusal” merge, taking on the shape of letters and words unfolding in the gallery space.

The title of the exhibition comes from the final sentence of the poem The water of life by Elicura Chihuailaf (Quechurehue, 1952). In its closing lines, the poem invites us to continue it beyond the page, using imagination as an alternative to an extractivist worldview. For this exhibition, that idea is reconsidered to encompass the restrictive binary structures intertwined with such thinking. On many levels, it is indispensable to keep pouring back the water of life, so that we don’t become stagnant."