The Seville headquarters of the Biodiversity Foundation hosts from today the exhibition ‘Here is oil!’. This exhibition addresses the relationships between fossil fuels, contemporary forms of power and the imaginaries of desire. It focuses on the cultural history of fossil modernity in Spain and, in particular, during the Franco regime, tracing a genealogical line that connects the past and the present.

The dictatorship encouraged a series of oil prospecting aimed at guaranteeing the country’s energy sovereignty during the period of autarky, while promoting relations of international cooperation that would reduce the isolation of the regime. By way of satire, Rafael J. Salvia’s film Here is oil! (1955), which gives the exhibition its title, showed how the expectations of finding oil were disappointed in the Castilian town of Castilviejo.

There’s oil here!

This exhibition brings together a selection of photographs from different state and private archives that show how the dictatorship generated a series of cultural imaginaries aimed at conjuring up and overcoming the perception of backwardness in its incorporation into the rhythms of industrial modernity.

There’s oil here! It raises a fundamental idea: modernity based on fossil fuels is not only a matter of industrial policy, but also a source that shapes collective imaginaries.

The texts that accompany the photographs incorporate the reflections of researcher Cara Daggett, who explains the relationship between male subjectivity and the use of fossil fuels through the concept of “petromasculinity”. According to him, one of the origins of this idea is in the fascist exaltation of the culture of war and the cult of the leader during the interwar period. The Franco regime reproduced these imaginaries around the crusade of the civil war and the tractor as a symbol of economic self-sufficiency. Later, with developmentalist policies, the private car came to represent the aspirations for happiness and freedom associated with progress, while reinforcing patriarchal structures.

The itinerancy of this exhibition in Seville is part of the collaboration agreement signed between the Biodiversity Foundation and the Círculo de Bellas Artes de Madrid, with the aim of launching joint initiatives in the field of art and nature.

It can be visited from today, May 4 until June 15, free of charge, at the headquarters of the Biodiversity Foundation in Seville (Patio de Banderas, 16), from Monday to Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. and on Saturdays from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.