Jellyfish Biopolitics: Posthumanist Reflections on Rosana Antolí’s A Golden Age: Pulse, Throb, Drift Exhibition
Jellyfish Biopolitics: Posthumanist Reflections on Rosana Antolí’s A Golden Age: Pulse, Throb, Drift Exhibition

Summary/Abstract: This essay analyses A Golden Age: Pulse, Throb, Drift (CentroCentro, Madrid, 2020), an exhibition by Rosana Antolí, through the lens of posthumanist theory. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s concept of biopolitics, Jane Bennett’s new materialist ‘force of things’ notion, and Stacy Alaimo’s watery metaphors, it investigates the connections between Antolí’s contemporary art installations and human-centric way of thinking. Collectively, these frameworks converge in their critique of human exceptionalism, offering ways to understand how artistic depictions and forms of existence they echo extend one step beyond the human and into the realm of the nonhuman (and the inanimate). Both jellyfish as a species and the artworks they inspire present a potential means of challenging and expanding anthropocentric epistemologies and ontologies. Building on the work of Cary Wolfe and Judith Butler on shared vulnerability, the exploration here connects visual art practice with theoretical debates on fluid gelata ontologies, offering a case study for rethinking human/non-human relations.

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