"Miasma" focuses on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) covert and surveillance operations on foreign soil, particularly in the case of Mexico. The figure of the 41st President of the United States, George H. W. Bush, is also prominently represented in allusion to the neoliberal policies that were imposed in several Latin American countries under the protective veil of the CIA.
The piece takes as its primary source the book The CIA in Mexico (1984) by journalist Manuel Buendía, who was murdered months after the launching of the investigation that listed the names of a series of infiltrated agents based in Mexico City, as well as a couple of chapters dedicated to unraveling Bush's role as director of the CIA (1976-1977) and his incidence in the introduction of the neoliberal system in Mexico with the of the agency of which he was in charge. As part of the research, Okón also reviewed the documentary holdings of the Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas Library, which contains documentary evidence of CIA covert operations in Mexico during the 1970s and 1980s.
The 10 photographic prints mounted on MDF that are part of the Amparo Museum Collection are figures with powerful symbolic meanings: the eagle and the letters of the word CIA designed with the U.S. flag that appeared on the cover of Buendía's book, images of the bas-reliefs that accompany the Bush monument in Texas, which represent glorious moments of his career, cockroaches found on the site and the figure of a person on a two-wheeled scooter. Overall, the work stands as a ruin on the false and still latent illusion of the functioning of neoliberalism even as its foundations are collapsing and causing high levels of violence, inequality, poverty, environmental destruction and extreme illicit wealth.
Okón took the word "miasma" as the title of the piece, which according to the Oxford Dictionary means: "oppressive or unpleasant atmosphere that surrounds or emanates from something." Thus, from its very title and materialization, the piece becomes a metaphor for the rottenness that neoliberalism has brought as an economic model, mainly in countries like Mexico and at the expense of U.S. interests, while trying to sustain the false idea of social, economic and political stability.
AC, May 2020.
Bibliography
Luis Felipe Ferra, “Yoshua Okón vs la metástasis neoliberal” (Yoshua Okón vs. neoliberal metastasis) in Hotbook, December 2019.
Magalí Arriola, “Trading Places” in Frieze, May 2017.
“Las operaciones encubiertas de la CIA en Miasma de Yoshua Okón” (The CIA's covert operations in Yoshua Okón's Miasma) in Artishock, February 17, 2017.
Sonia Ávila, “Yoshua Okón, tras sombrío legado de Bush (Yoshua Okón, after Bush's grim legacy) in: Excélsior, Culture section, February 7, 2017.
"Miasma" focuses on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) covert and surveillance operations on foreign soil, particularly in the case of Mexico. The figure of the 41st President of the United States, George H. W. Bush, is also prominently represented in allusion to the neoliberal policies that were imposed in several Latin American countries under the protective veil of the CIA.
The piece takes as its primary source the book The CIA in Mexico (1984) by journalist Manuel Buendía, who was murdered months after the launching of the investigation that listed the names of a series of infiltrated agents based in Mexico City, as well as a couple of chapters dedicated to unraveling Bush's role as director of the CIA (1976-1977) and his incidence in the introduction of the neoliberal system in Mexico with the of the agency of which he was in charge. As part of the research, Okón also reviewed the documentary holdings of the Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas Library, which contains documentary evidence of CIA covert operations in Mexico during the 1970s and 1980s.
The 10 photographic prints mounted on MDF that are part of the Amparo Museum Collection are figures with powerful symbolic meanings: the eagle and the letters of the word CIA designed with the U.S. flag that appeared on the cover of Buendía's book, images of the bas-reliefs that accompany the Bush monument in Texas, which represent glorious moments of his career, cockroaches found on the site and the figure of a person on a two-wheeled scooter. Overall, the work stands as a ruin on the false and still latent illusion of the functioning of neoliberalism even as its foundations are collapsing and causing high levels of violence, inequality, poverty, environmental destruction and extreme illicit wealth.
Okón took the word "miasma" as the title of the piece, which according to the Oxford Dictionary means: "oppressive or unpleasant atmosphere that surrounds or emanates from something." Thus, from its very title and materialization, the piece becomes a metaphor for the rottenness that neoliberalism has brought as an economic model, mainly in countries like Mexico and at the expense of U.S. interests, while trying to sustain the false idea of social, economic and political stability.
