Property: one thing protected or shared or forcefully taken, one thing gained or misplaced or desired or loved. Personal property performs a job in well-being, some philosophers have argued, however it’s additionally been the premise for all types of exploitation, as historical past has proven. Both manner, a lot has come to relaxation on this idea. It’s an summary concept that shapes concrete actuality in profound methods, shadowed by questions of who owns what, and why, and the friction of private and non-private pursuits. As time goes by, property additionally is available in many various types: some are bodily, others more and more intangible, some deeply acquainted and others main towards unknown horizons.

“Worry of Property” develops out of ongoing conversations with artists round these concepts, varied associated histories and rising futures, and a spread of lived experiences in between. The exhibition additionally step by step builds on the instinct that property organizes not solely social and financial relations, however dimensions of emotional l­ife as we speak as effectively. The works on view have their very own distinctive contours of feeling as such, at the same time as they draw out considerations round possession and company, land and the buildings we inhabit, caretaking, tradition and language, synthetic intelligence, and extra. And a few of them may trace at methods of being on the earth that aren’t framed by way of “property” in any respect.

The exhibition title itself is drawn from an essay by cultural anthropologist Cameron Hu, the place he speaks to the underlying logics of futures buying and selling whereas reflecting on the work of artists Marissa Benedict, Daniel de Paula, and David Rueter. His closing perception in that essay, a “worry of property,” factors to disembodied monetary innovations that also ripple outward as we speak. On this exhibition, his idea opens up different paths for thought, too, spreading out into many various contexts.

at The Renaissance Society, Chicago
till November 6, 2022