A bestiary is a medieval manuscript that brings together stories and moral lessons about animals—real or imaginary—portrayed as religious or ethical symbols. These texts offer more than zoological knowledge; through their descriptions, they reveal how humans project their beliefs onto the animal world.

The exhibition Antes el después (“Before the After”), by French artist Margaux Compte-Mergier (Paris, 1994), presents a series of sculptures that incorporate animal elements. They evoke the fragility of beasts, the threat of extinction, transhumanism, and question the evolving concept of what is considered “alive,” along with the boundaries between nature and culture.

“The After,” emphasized by the use of the definite article, refers to what has already taken place. The title situates the exhibition in a transitional space—an in-between moment. A suspended interval before the “after” fully emerges. Between a past and a future that mirror each other, the present of the exhibition remains in suspense. Through this temporal limbo, Compte-Mergier interrogates the era we inhabit—an age where our vision of the future appears unresolved, tinged with anxiety. A flux, a heterogeneous matter in constant transformation, shaped by images of catastrophe, crisis, climate collapse, war, and apocalyptic forebodings. It is this anxious sense of becoming that lies at the heart of her work.

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Exhibition : RÍO & MEÑAKA gallery