THE TERMS OF INDEPENDENCE

On 27 June, as INDEPENDENCE opened at Brixton House, artist Ilê Sartuzi sent a letter from Prato, Italy, to London. It was addressed to Gabriela Román González, the exhibition’s curator, and artist Débora Delmar. In the gallery, one of the contracts written for the project stated that if the letter arrived before the exhibition’s closing date of 4 July, it had to be displayed. The correspondence did not arrive in time.

What it contained, the words ‘This is Mario Merz’ and a sheet bearing the question Lo spazio è curvo o diritto - ‘Is space curved or straight?’^[1], could only be seen later, in photographs published in the exhibition summary. It was a reference to a glass-and-steel igloo Merz built in 1973. Merz and Emilio Prini sat inside it to read, write and talk, turning the structure into a space for living and relating to others^[2]. And INDEPENDENCE, in turn, proposed whether an exhibition could work in a similar relational way.

Presented as part of Systems in Question, a chapter of CASA’s Lines of Flight programme, Sartuzi, Delmar, and Román González made their own working relationships a field of experimentation, in which to test what it means to act independently and what makes independence possible. These questions are asked at a moment when working in the arts is particularly challenging in terms of negotiating income, time and working rights protection; a reality that becomes exponentially more fragile for cultural workers who cross borders and must exercise their practice within foreign legal and institutional infrastructures.^[3]

At the centre of the gallery, three contracts were presented on a metal ring. Each was an Independently Authored Contractual Artwork, written from the position of Delmar, Sartuzi and Román González. At first glance, the three documents might be read as an image of equal participation. But reading the contracts revealed how differently the curator and artists entered the agreement, laying bare negotiations around their own artistic visions and requirements for the installation, and each person’s responsibilities and fees. It’s these typically hidden details that became the core structure of the exhibition itself, inviting us to dissect what each participant agrees to and ultimately compromises on to make it happen.

This self-reflexive gesture is one of INDEPENDENCE’s strengths. Román González’s curatorial approach was not limited to bringing together works that illustrated forms of independence and personal agency, rather, it created a space in which to test how independence might be exercised. From this emerged obligations and outcomes that no one could fully control. At the same time, through many of the artistic gestures the exhibition proposed, it opened up a broader reflection on the conditions in which art production takes place.

From each author’s personal contract presented on the central metal ring installation, the eye could move towards the walls. Across them ran a chronology of British immigration legislation dating from 1948, the year the Empire Windrush arrived carrying hundreds of migrants from the Caribbean, to the most recent one today. Set in pale grey, the entries encircled the room with the discretion of an administrative document. Their spatial proximity to the metal ring holding the contracts also prompted me to ask how the curator and artists’ agreements, whether intimate or professional, take shape within legislative structures that exceed them and, in many cases, determine an unequal distribution of power. Presented as a continuous line - moving away from the dramatic iconography usually associated with borders - the timeline seemed to emphasise how immigration policy is not a series of isolated past events, but an accumulating structure that grants or limits working conditions and mobility rights.

This subtle tension became explicit in Delmar’s contract, which required each participant’s specific immigration circumstances to be declared. As the wall text noted, none of them were born in the United Kingdom, yet all three live and work within the legal conditions shaped by this history, making the legislation a framework through which the exhibition itself can be read.

Delmar’s contract pushed this inquiry into autonomy even further by translating abstract independence into daily, relational habits. As agreed in her Brief IV and Brief V, each participant needed to wear a wristwatch set to another’s home time zone (Cuba for Delmar, Mexico for Sartuzi, Brazil for Román González). Checking the time became a constant reminder of their mutual obligation. They were also required to send one another a daily ‘CLOCK IN’ text message.

While ‘CLOCK IN’ borrows from factory workers clocking ‘in’ and eventually ‘out’ once their shift ends, here it marked the labour that continued long after gallery hours. Combined with other contractual directives, such as Delmar and Román González purchasing imported fruit from the nearby Brixton Village Market to consume in the space, the exhibition pointed to the idea of invisible labour that is constantly overlooked and taken for granted.

Román González’s contract brought the curatorial role into the same inquiry from a different angle. It named her as the person shaping the exhibition’s conceptual framework, mediating between the artists and the institution, and making decisions that affected the project. However, it also acknowledged that those decisions were made within relationships she could not determine alone. Her contract gave this interdependence a place within the exhibition, making the negotiation of its conditions part of the work itself.

What each agreement required could also be discovered through a QR code in the Certificate of Independence^[4], another work on display, which was interactive. It led visitors, in real time, to a Negotiation Log: an exhibition archive where they could follow some of the interactions taking place behind the scenes whilst the show was open to the public.

INDEPENDENCE demanded time from its visitors. One had to read the contracts, access the archive and look again at what seemed incidental. That demand for attention was part of the exhibition’s appeal and also one of its risks as some of its most important statements could go unnoticed by someone simply walking through the gallery.

It is difficult to hear the word ‘independence’ without hearing the promise it carries; to govern oneself, to be subject to no one, to be able to decide one’s own future. The exhibition brought that promise into contact with much smaller acts like wearing a watch, sending two words, buying fruit, and waiting for a letter. Yet these acts made the fantasy of complete self-sufficiency difficult to sustain. Depending on others is part of living and working with them; what changes is who can negotiate the terms of that dependence and who bears the consequences when those terms change.

The letter from Prato finally arrived at Román González’s home, outside the time and place the participants had established. It crossed the distance on the map, but did not arrive within the interval that would have allowed it to enter the exhibition. This is an important gesture because it shows that intention alone does not determine the outcome, and ultimately every independent action remains bound to the interdependent conditions where it takes place. 

References

^[1]  INDEPENDENCE: Exhibition Summary, London, 2026, exhibition documentation. https://nottheowners.co.uk/projects/independence-curation?itemId=37scx57z7814tjut2hs6a5ppoii6uu

^[2] Pirelli HangarBicocca, Mario Merz: Igloos, exhibition guide (2018), entry for Is space bent or straight? (1973), https://pirellihangarbicocca.org/en/exhibition/mario-merz-igloos/.

^[3] UNESCO, Global Report on Cultural Policies: Culture: The Missing SDG, “Key facts and figures”, https://www.unesco.org/en/culture/global-report. According to a 2025 UNESCO report only 9% of the artists and cultural professionals they surveyed felt that their economic and social rights were adequately or strongly protected.

^[4] INDEPENDENCE: Exhibition Summary, London, 2026, exhibition documentation. https://nottheowners.co.uk/projects/independence-curation?itemId=kuvydfkdhlxg47uqd2hqparmbnaqxe