An autonomous subject, freed from its physical limits, driven by inexorable progress, becoming master and possessor of nature: this is the myth of which the car is the symbol. In other words, an epic, individualistic and ‘Petromasculinist”’ (according to Cara New Dagget) narrative – one that supports the modes of production, relationships of domination and exploitation that are at the root of the destruction of our ecosystems.

This the modern heritage addressed by ‘Humain Autonome: Déroutes,’ an exhibition which juxtaposes the imaginaries and the realities of the civilisation of the car. The car is an object of fetishism, and here it is reinscribed in the systems of energy, the organisation of work, geopolitical issues, the eroticism and the counter-cultures that it implies – those of ‘fossil capital’, according to Andreas Malm, which is constantly renewing itself.

The artists in this exhibition, from different generations and from both the French and international scenes, are concerned with a different conception of human autonomy: understood not as independence from any exteriority, but as the capacity to reflect on our own determinations and interdependencies. An autonomy situated in relation to a social and symbolic order that needs to be deconstructed.

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