YOSHUA OKÓN

Miasma is about espionage and covert operations, it is about what we apparently see versus what lies underneath the surface. It is about the sophisticated, sexy and polished image that consumer culture projects versus its dark and violent underbelly. Miasma takes as a starting point “La CIA en México” (The CIA in Mexico), a book published in 1984 by Mexican journalist Manuel Buendía, who, months after the publication, was assassinated with four shots in the back. Besides citing names and addresses of US covert agents operating in Mexico, Buendía's visionary book also points to the hidden neoliberal agenda behind such infiltration and gives a us a great insight into today's profound crisis. Two full chapters of "La CIA en México" are dedicated to George H.W. Bush, who in the late seventies was the CIA’s director and who, as an oil businessman turned politician, is an emblematic figure of neoliberalism. Miasma includes a series of photo sculptures and a video installation, all shot at George H.W. Bush monument in Houston, Texas, as well as a poster campaign and a series of drawings based on the book cover. Miasma, which according to the Oxford dictionary means "an oppressive or unpleasant atmosphere which surrounds or emanates from something", becomes a metaphor for the shiny illusion of stability that serves as a cover for an unsustainable and destructive system; where, even as things collapse, the image still stands.