Angels of Sabotage

Alicia Kamien Kazhdan

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Angels of Sabotage carves out a pathway to erupt/escape/confront/liberate the violent currents of our time. In this land of sanctity and danger, of promises and disillusionments, violence and redemption, what forces protect us—our guardian angels, our divine providence? And what are the forces/instincts that wound us—our angels of sabotage?

The term originates from Babylonian demonology: a malevolent spirit that leads humanity astray, driving us toward sin and transgression. These angels of sabotage channel and manipulate our innate lust for destruction—a tendency that typically lies dormant but easily awakened. The angel "lurks in anticipation, waiting for the moment when a person will falter and be ensnared" (Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Berakhot, 51a).

The artists in this exhibition embody the charged and complex energy of the struggle to grasp the extremes; the angel and the saboteur within us. They explore the destructive impulse residing in the human soul in a state of incubation or latency. The artists grapple with the boundaries between ritual/wrestling, the mystical/political, animal carcasses/love bites/bloodbaths.

When a nation is summoned to war, a spectrum of human motives may respond to the call; noble and depraved motives, some openly avowed, others slurred over. The lust for aggression and sabotage lies among them.

In his 1932 letter to Freud, Einstein asked, "Is there any way of delivering mankind from the menace of war?" Though he believed there was little chance to suppress humanity's aggressive tendencies, Freud responded with some hope, "If the propensity for war be due to the destructive instinct, we have always its counter-agent, Eros, to our hand.” All that produces ties of sentiment between man and man must serve us as war's antidote.