Within the framework of the UP series (Unsustainable Privileges), the artist Mariana Castillo Deball, in the exhibition Pleasures of Association, and Poissons, such as Love, creates a spiral installation of a genealogical tree which illustrates the development of the vertebrate – from fish to bird – which occurred over a period of 200 million years. An inconceivable period becomes tangible.
We humans have the privilege to unpick evolutionary processes, to be able to associate, give order to and shape them. On the other hand, the evolutionary process stems back to a time long preceding human existence.
The starting point for the artist’s work is her enthusiasm for fossils and their association with lithography as well as the change in evolutionary research during technical development. Mariana Castillo Deball’s Pleasures of Association, and Poissons, such as Love thematizes the rivalry between different techniques for creating scientific "facts", each showing a different view of Evolution.