Patriarchy = CO2

© Vicens Giménez — EL PAÍS

That equation cries out the equality of its two sides, the left-hand side and the right-hand side, bound irrevocably and forever by the mathematical sign of equality. Mathematics embraces equalities that reality, forever unequal and imperfect, rarely offers us.

Contemporary art, however, is profoundly mathematical, even if at times it draws upon the mathematics of chaos, infinity, and irrational numbers—upon fractals, Fibonacci, the Pythagorean tetraktys, and the number π.

What are Les Demoiselles d'Avignon or Continuum if not majestic fractals?

Conceived by Claire Fontaine—the Paris-based artistic duo—as a monumental sign crowning an old industrial warehouse dating from the early twentieth century, the work stands on the island of San Giacomo, near Venice. The island was purchased from a banking institution by the wealthy Turinese art collector Patrizia Sandretto. How delightfully money can arrange such agreements.

In a mathematical equation (A = B), the equals sign establishes the strict identity of its two terms. Those two parallel lines project us toward infinity. A and B are exactly the same thing. It is the dizzying logic of the principle of identity, a principle that modern subatomic particle physics has called into question. Fontaine transfers the magic of the overwhelming—and only apparent—simplicity of mathematical equations into the realm of politics, itself so unequal, to tell us that saying patriarchy and saying environmental destruction is to say the same thing; it is to fall into a pleonasm, like saying “shut your mouth.”

Patriarchy emits as much testosterone as carbon dioxide; indeed, patriarchy is carbon dioxide.

(I wonder, in passing, with the innocence of an apprentice, how one can have enough money to collect contemporary art and still have enough left over to buy an island overlooking the Venetian waterfront where the Ospedale della Pietà stands—the orphanage and music conservatory where Antonio Vivaldi served as violin master for thirty years and premiered many of his works.)

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