Rebel aesthetics: remnants of the Zapatistas’ journey to Europe
Curators: Paula Barreiro López, Cristina García Martinez, Sonia Kerfa, Tobias Locker, Anita Orzes
23 April – 18 May 2026
Espace muséographie Joseph Fournier, Université Grenoble Alpes
In 2021, the Journey for Life took place in Europe, an initiative led by the Zapatistas aimed at meeting grassroots collectives engaged in struggles against the ecocidal logics of the market. Hundreds of activist groups organized to welcome them and to exchange through activities that were both festive and political, supported by an intense production of visual materials (photographs, paintings, videos). In Chiapas, after more than thirty years of hosting thousands of visitors from Europe and elsewhere who came to learn from a territory rich in atypical struggles and practices of the commons, it was in turn up to European activists to respond—politically and culturally—to the Zapatistas’ call for dialogue and shared knowledge.
This exhibition proposes to explore the visual culture that emerged from the Journey for Life, situating it within a longue durée that brings 2021 into dialogue with 1492, the year of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the Americas. The journey is thus understood not only as a contemporary inversion of the transatlantic crossing, but also as a collective process of common-making and as a political, aesthetic, and symbolic laboratory.
Through objects, images, archives, recordings, and artworks, the exhibition interrogates the role of visual practices in the construction of shared imaginaries, the transnational circulation of struggles, and the redefinition of the relationships between art, activism, and life. Far from being mere documents, these productions are approached as active forms of thought, carrying affects, memories, and political projections.
The images and objects brought together in this exhibition do not simply bear witness to an event; they actively participate in the elaboration of new narratives of solidarity, internationalism, and the defense of life. In this sense, the Journey for Life is conceived as a fully-fledged visual, performative, and political event, in which images do not merely illustrate struggles but produce, accompany, and transform them.
