YOSHUA OKÓN

Collateral underlines, and haunts, the political consequences of decisions and actions, pointing to how they ramify and reach-out; but especially to their unacknowledged consequences. 

Emphasizing Okon’s engagements over the last decade or so with the social and political organization of groups, the video installations and other works brought together in Collateral front onto and collide with international relations, showcasing the artist’s signature politics of infiltration. Various social formations and coteries (“border protectors,” dress-up hobbyists, undocumented laborers, small town boosters) act out and reinvent their daily routines, lacing them with fantasies and speculative delusion. Okón creates an almost uncanny space in which these actions—satirical, parodic, but also transporting and often unpredictably or darkly hilarious—force us to resituate ourselves in a mainstream culture we thought we knew. 

Collateral was presented for the first time at the Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo from October 7, 2017 to February 11, 2018 and then traveled to the Amparo Museum in Puebla. Collateral was a co-production of the MUAC and Museo Amparo.