The deception

PalmaAfter touring the retrospective exhibition of Joan Fontcuberta at Casal Solleric, I went back. A doubt lingered in my mind: what was true and what wasn't in Fauna, the large installation that, signed with Pere Formiguera, occupies two of the largest rooms in the center.

You see, I know its history, I must have had it simply tucked away in a corner of my memory. You see, I know well that Fontcuberta has built a large part of his career playing with the very fine lines that separate reality from fiction. You see, I know that deception is one of the tools he uses with the most skill to show us to what extent we live surrounded by lies, simulations, and fabricated narratives. You see, I am aware that he was talking about fake news before the term existed, that he has been warning us for decades about the manipulation of images and about the ease with which any story can be presented as truth. And, nevertheless, I went back.

to the Toni Catany Foundation in Llucmajor, and to The best thing about Fontcuberta is that he doesn't deceive us for no reason. Perhaps he deceives us so that we better understand how the mechanisms of manipulation work, and also those of credulity. So that we discover to what extent truth is vulnerable when a lie is well constructed. This idea also runs through Fontcuberta's other two concurrent exhibitions in Mallorca. In the large installation of Via Làctia at the Fundació Toni Catany in Llucmajor, and in Orquídies i macarres at the Xavier Fiol gallery in Palma. In all three, the same question arises: what is real and what is a construction? What belongs to the facts and what to the narrative? What do we observe and what do they make us observe?

For a long time, we thought that deceptions prospered because there was a lack of information. We also believed that the remedy was knowledge. Today, we are not so sure. It turns out that we can be informed about a topic, know the manipulation strategies, and still be vulnerable. It is not enough to know that deception exists to avoid it. It is not enough to be warned about it. The sophistication of simulation mechanisms grows faster than our defenses.

And this is very relevant at a time when artificial intelligence is capable of generating images, videos, voices, and narratives that are increasingly indistinguishable from reality. Let us not underestimate what Fontcuberta has been showing us for decades. His work does not only speak of photography or art. It speaks of us and the use made of it, of our need to believe.

I went back to look at Fauna again. I knew I was being deceived. Nevertheless, for a moment, I doubted it just the same. And this is just the beginning.