Ten years ago, on October 3, 2014, we inaugurated the exhibition We Protect You from Yourselves by DEMOCRACIA collective at ADN Galeria. Among the pieces that made up this exhibition, there was a series of portraits of officers who were part of the Intervention Units of the National Police Force. The images had been captured by artists the previous year during the demonstration that took place in the city of Madrid on April 25, 2013 under the slogan “Asedia el Congreso”. At the close of the exhibition, two complaints were filed against both the gallery and the artists: one for criminal libel and the other for the exhibition of personal data filed by the Unified Police Union through administrative proceedings at the Spanish Data Protection Agency.
As is well known, the story that the gallery has built around the triad art, politics and society, has received more denunciations and pressures from other groups and institutions. These episodes have left a mark on our history, prompting us to reflect as we revisit 16 retratos. This time, altered voluntarily by DEMOCRACIA, under what we might call a “legal imperative” with dual aims: to protect us from ourselves and to show that self-censorship is in the default toolbox of the cultural sector.
In this exhibition we complement these altered portraits with additional pieces from the ADN Collection and works by artists we work with, all exploring police iconography and subject matters.
Artists: Eduardo Arroyo, Equipo Crónica, DEMOCRACIA, Kendell Geers, Núria Güell , Imon Boy, Eugenio Merino, Joan Pallé, Avelino Sala.
