The exhibition “Conspiracies” at the Warburg Institute in London, curated by Larne Abse Gogarty, brings together works by Hannah Black, Caspar Heinemann, Sam Keogh, and Shenece Oretha alongside panels from Aby Warburg’s Bilderatlas Mnemosyne. Through sculpture, drawing, collage, installation, and sound, the show resists the idea that conspiracy can be solved by exposure or critique, instead constructing unstable relations between historical images, speculative narratives, and material processes. Key works include Heinemann’s drawings reimagining Ted Kaczynski as “Theodora” and Keogh’s large-scale collage referencing medieval tapestries and surveillance systems.
The exhibition matters because it reframes conspiracy not as a pathology to be debunked but as a recurring structure of interpretation and political feeling, challenging the critical habit of seeking hidden mechanisms behind social relations. By foregrounding fragmentation, redaction, and the persistence of handmade labor, the show offers a nuanced alternative to both conspiracy thinking and the critical practices that mirror its logic. It contributes to ongoing debates in contemporary art about how images circulate and how political meaning is constructed in an era of information overload.