Twenty-two artists of international acclaim will be featured at Parallax Art Center in an art show about death, necropolitics, and transformation. Titled Probably Just the Wind, this ambitious multimedia exhibition offers a wide range of provocative artworks that challenge visitors to stare Death in the face. From spectacular images of exploding hearses, jewel-encrusted skeletons, and activists dressed as the Grim Reaper, to highly critical works exploring gun violence, ecological threats, and grave injustices, every corner offers a different glimpse into the shadows and the light of the 'great unknown'.

In one installation titled, Aire (Air), by famed Mexican artist Teresa Margolles, a room is filled with vapor made from water tainted by a violent event in Ciudad Juarez. Visitors entering the room simultaneously become aware of the sublime haunting of a spirit-like mist, their own breath draws it in, and the foreboding circumstances that can steal that breath away.

Another work by celebrated German conceptualist Hans Haacke, is titled Monument to Beach Pollution and appears to show an enormous mound of trash blocking an otherwise beautiful view of a sandy Spanish coastline. Do we focus on the death of material goods discarded wantonly? Or, on the artists' careful efforts to gather them from a natural environment that is also under threat of decline?

These and many other works, take a variety of approaches to create work that is both somber and celebratory, serious and irreverent, pensive and populist, prescriptive and enigmatic. According to curator, Aaron Gach, "Death has been called ‘the great equalizer’ and yet, there is nothing equal about the ways in which we encounter death. Likewise, each work is an incarnation of a social haunting; a scream or a shout, a whisper or a chill, that calls attention to the many traces of death drawn throughout our lives.”

Parallax Art Center, a new non-profit in town that puts hard conversations about social justice and environmental protection at the core of its programming, can only hope that this collection of attitudes and interpretations can help each of us reflect on our own relationship to death, both individually and collectively. Probably Just the Wind opens on October 14 and runs through December 23, 2022. The opening reception will be held on Friday October 14th, from 5–8pm. Featured artists include:


Amaryllis Dejesus Moleski
Andrew Brandou
Angela Hennessy
Center for Tactical Magic
Daniel Bräg
Dennis Palazzolo
Dread Scott
Forensic Architecture
Hans Haacke
Hilma’s Ghost
Jill Magid
Joseph DeLappe
Kate Haug
Matt Kenyon
Nicholas Galanin
Packard Jennings
Paul Koudounaris
Pedro Reyes
Public Collectors
Teresa Margolles
US Games, Inc.
Will Rogan