The Accursed Share, a new group exhibition featuring nine artists and artists’ groups, aims to take our personal understanding of debt and put it into a global context. The exhibition explores the many narratives of debt, namely those generated and enforced through stolen land and themarch of capitalism.
On entering the gallery we are met with Cian Dayrit’s powerful tapestries hung on the imperial green walls. These works are made in collaboration with people from marginalised communities in the Philippines, which is also the artist’s home. In one, Tree of Life in the State of Decay and Rebirth (a collaboration with Henry Caceres), a stitched diagram of the feudal systems imposed on land workers is woven into the form of a tree. The tree stretches up from six roots, each labelled with a violent power such as imperialism and capitalism. The spiky, jagged branches break off and multiply, containing the abundant conditions of their making: cheap labour, militarisation, ethnocide. The background is dotted with crosshairs, like blossoms falling from a tree.
