The Object of Power is Power

Rocío García, La Bella Samurai, 2021. Oil on canvas, 160 x 190 cm. Courtesy of Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, New York.
19 May 2026
Closes: 20 September 2026
Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art presents The Object of Power is Power, an exhibition that brings together twelve works from different series across Cuban artist Rocío García’s artistic career. Curated by the Cuban-American author Carmen Maria Machado, the exhibition addresses power and the ways in which it is configured as a guiding force in human relationships.
The Object of Power is Power suggests an uncomfortable yet necessary question: if it is impossible to exist entirely outside systems of domination, where does freedom reside?
Within García’s work, power is not a distant or monolithic order, but an omnipresent force rooted in everyday gestures, connections, and seemingly banal situations. Sex emerges in the show as an ambivalent reality, simultaneously vulnerable and violent, a site where one dominates and one is dominated. It becomes a pretext for questioning the structures that shape our relationships with others and with ourselves, as well as broader systems of political, economic, and religious control.
Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art
26 Wooster Street, Soho
New York, United States
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