S_HE DEVIL is born of the desire to offer as faithful a picture as possible of the complex reality we’re living in. At the same time, it aspires to paint a picture of how regrettably binary, static and reductive conceptual frameworks may be overcome.

Starting from a consideration of queer art and the concept of gender, this edition seeks to examine how it is precisely those process of contamination, hybridisation and métissage that have defined the landscape of contemporary practice today.

In keeping with this aim, and for the first time in the exhibition’s history, the curatorial team has selected works by international artists of all genders, both established and emerging. By doing so, they have mapped out a journey that explores the outcomes and facets of that practice and its processes, taking in fields as distinct and remote as sociology, biology and technology.

Therein how a consideration of fluid identities becomes a reflection on the fluidity of the times we’re living in – a period undoubtedly bound up with the uncertainties, acceleration and ubiquity promised by technology – but which we have also interpreted as a specific attitude to existence: one that has the ability to adapt, as well as the strength to overwhelm and determine new consequences, like a river bursting its banks.

Internationally acclaimed artist Yoko Ono is ‘godmother‘ to this edition, with her piece SPACE TRANSFORMERS. The work is part of Instruction Pieces, a series the artist has been working on since the 1960s, in which each creation is structured in three indivisible parts – a concept, an object and a piece to be made.

The installation is composed of a series of small, letterpress-printed cards available to the visitor, each of which features, black on white, the text that gives the work its title. The cards are an invitation; in the words of the artist, they encourage us to “build in our own minds” a specific place where each of us, as we travel through space and time, is entirely conscious of being able to undergo our own transformation.