Must-See: Iván Argote’s Playful Revisions of Power

This review is part of a series of Must-See shows, in which a writer delivers a snapshot of a current exhibition

In Paris’s 7th arrondissement stands a bronze statue of the French military commander Joseph Gallieni in uniform, held aloft by four allegorical caryatids. Gallieni’s presence in countries such as Senegal, Mali and French Sudan in the late 19th century was instrumental to the French imposition of colonial rule. In 1896, Gallieni, known for using violence and executions to quell political uprisings, was appointed governor of Madagascar, which was then newly under French control. The monument’s contested history was brought to the fore in 2020 when activists draped black cloth over the statue and insisted it should be removed from view.

What we should do with contested histories in the public realm is key to Colombian artist Iván Argote’s practice and his current survey, ‘Radical Tenderness’, at Prague’s Galerie Rudolfinum. Levitate (2022), a three-channel video connecting public squares and cultural heritage in the European capitals of Paris, Madrid and Rome, proposes one speculative solution. Working collaboratively with theorist Françoise Vergès and journalist Pablo Pillaud-Vivien in Paris, Argote deploys wit and deftness to imagine the temporary removal of the colonialist statue. Images of Gallieni’s monument being lifted from its pedestal by a crane generated considerable attention and heated debate across the digital realm. Levitate skilfully asks viewers to consider the interplay between fact and fiction within collective memory and in a politically volatile and polarized social climate. 

At the heart of the exhibition is Wild Flowers (2024–25), a proposition for the ideal public park that takes the form of an intervention into the gallery space: in one room, wildflowers and native fauna grow from patches of soil as well as from fragmented bronze casts of the Roman emperor Augustus interspersed among the shrubbery. Instead of fulfilling their original purpose of communicating state power, these dispersed body parts become vessels for growth and renewal.

Nearby, a large, gilded sculpture of a sweet potato (Sweet Potato, 2017) sees Argote celebrating a now commonplace foodstuff, inviting viewers to reflect on migration and the transmission of cultural heritage. Argote’s installations puts forward a reframing of modern society: instead of celebrating conquest and plunder, violence and dispossession, what would happen if we turned our attention to, even elevated, the quotidian, the unfussy and unglamorous? From potatoes to pigeons (Precious, 2018), park benches (On How We Relate, 2018/2021) and handles on the Paris Métro (Altruism, 2011), Argote implores us to review our value systems and to reconsider what it means to live alongside each other in the public realm. The coyly playful yet rigorous upending of political hierarchies through his artworks might well be Argote’s most radically tender act. 

Iván Argote’s ‘Radical Tenderness’ is on view at Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague, until 7 September

_{Main image: Iván Argote, Activissime (archives), 2025, ‘Radical Tenderness’, 2025, exhibition view. Courtesy: © Galerie Rudolfinum; photograph: Ondřej Polák}