"Thinking historically, for philosopher Walter Benjamin, means seizing ahold of a constellation of images precisely as they flash up at a moment of danger[1]. This dialectical image of history, for Benjamin, presents itself in a clustered form made legible, if only for an instant, as multiple divergent associations forged across time and circumstance. In Neo Gods & Hyper Myths, artist Ira Lombardía draws from her archival work in the Aby Warburg Institute, whose images so inspired Benjamin’s dialectical philosophy of history, to provide an appealing artistic commentary on the semiotic unfoldings of the word “Victory” and its plural connotations. The result confronts viewers with the contradictory images of triumph from antiquity to the current geopolitical state of affairs, from grassroots social revolutions to imperialist wars, from micro to macro contexts. These images range from statues of the goddess Victoria in ancient Greece to, more recently, Victoria’s Secret models in the last runway show before the brand’s decision to cancel the media spectacle definitively, or the Instagram photograph of Nike brand shoes set ablaze over the Colin Kaepernick controversy. The rise of the extreme right in this newfound political—indeed, global—scenario makes historical and philosophical thinking as urgent as it is necessary. And so too does Lombardía’s project resonate in theme and tempo with Benjamin’s own, not only for their respective provocations to take stock of the rise of popular sympathies to authoritarian sentiments, perceived as a moment of danger, but also for Lombardía’s critical interest in the reproducibility of images within this scenario."

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Jonathan Snyder

Neo Gods & Hyper Myths

Meteoro Books, 2020