OP=OP

OP=OP is moezeum's second group exhibition and consists of seven artworks by artists from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Germany, Lebanon, Mexico, Palestine and the Netherlands. In the exhibition, they show how “exhaustion” in the broadest sense of the term is used as an instrument for colonial power and its capitalist systems. The participating artists are: Tala Abdalhadi // Diana Al-Halabi // Moses Maerz // Naomi Rincón-Gallardo // Sara Sallam // Firas Shehadeh // Jean Katambayi, Sammy Baloji, Daddy Tshikaya, and Marjolijn Dijkman.

In Arabic, the word ‘to consume’ - استهلك (is-tahlaka) - is derived from the root word َهَلَك (halaka) which means to deplete or to annihilate. Therefore, to consume is to enter an energetic relation of exhaustion, driving the resource towards its own annihilation الهلاك (al-halaak). Consumption here refers to an all-encompassing relationship of depletion, in which the origin is propelled toward its own destruction الهلاك (al-halaak). Although it's not a direct form of destruction, but it is certainly a way of clearing out until the bottom is in sight: the popular Dutch slogan OP=OP (gone when gone). Shops are always very eager to use this phrase to promote their capital, in order to emphasize scarcity and thus encourage ‘decisive’ consumption. Before it's too late – and it never comes back.

OP=OP can mean multiple things. It exposes the economics of exhaustion in ongoing acts of extraction, the production of scarcity, and the commercialization of culture, whereby land, natural resources, and people are used up until there is nothing left. Or: ‘I'm done’, exhausted or burned out, where total exhaustion is not a metaphorical or psychological time-out: it is a deliberate domination strategy used as a weapon. In this economy, the consumer is consumed and death is converted into capital.