The timing of this exhibition coincides with a profoundly disorienting phase in our national history. It is a time out of whack. The teleological narratives that have guided the operations of state power since the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st have crumbled, leaving behind ideological vacuums of monstrous proportions. But while the game has been disrupted, we have yet to understand whether or how the rules have changed. It is a time of great opportunity and a time of great risk.

If the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, then art has a special role to play. The works in this exhibition represent some of the particular ways in which artists access, spy upon, expose, memorialize, and occasionally trouble the machinations of state power. The title refers to a famous quote by the philosopher Michel Foucault: “Where there is power, there is resistance.” The turbulence of our current moment is a byproduct of tectonic shifts in this equation between state authority and those who oppose it, suggesting new potential strategies by which to both achieve and stymie the submission and control of mass populations. While the window to take stock of our recent history is rapidly closing, the stakes could not be higher, for as George Orwell once asserted, “Who controls the past controls the future, and who controls the present controls the past.”