Set Up Situations
Photography as Action
With artists: Iván Argote, Juan Brennar, Tania Candiani, Liz Cohen, Sergio de La Torre, Ana-Teresa Fernández, Kristie Hansen, Jim Jocoy, Michael Lundgren, Mariel Miranda, Gina Osterloh, Reynier Leyva Novo, Omar Soto, Koki Tanaka, Richard T. Walker
Curated by Julio César Morales
January 17 – April 26, 2026
Set Up Situations: Photography as Action brings together artists who use photography not merely as a medium of documentation, but as an active tool—one that intervenes, performs, and provokes. These artists approach photography as action: a gesture, a confrontation, and a collaboration. The exhibition invites viewers to consider the emotional and psychological textures embedded within images—what lies beneath the surface, in the act of looking and being seen.
Photography here becomes a form of personal activism, a space where identity, resistance, advocacy, and self-representation converge. The works reclaim narratives, question visibility, and open dialogue with the unseen or untold. In this way, Set Up Situations embraces photography as an evolving, performative act, where meaning unfolds in the moment of encounter.
The exhibition’s title draws inspiration from the practice of Japanese artist Koki Tanaka, whose work centers on constructing open-ended situations without predetermined outcomes. In A Haircut by 9 Hairdressers at Once (Second Attempt) (2010), Tanaka asks nine hairdressers to cut one person’s hair at the same time, creating a situation that demands collective negotiation, attentiveness, and compromise. The resulting work documents not a finished action, but the social dynamics that emerge when individual intention gives way to shared responsibility. Tanaka’s broader practice, shaped by early experiences of living and working collectively, treats artistic activity as a form of lived inquiry, where clarity and complexity coexist. This emphasis on process, unpredictability, and temporal community provides a conceptual framework for the exhibition as a whole.
