While the first cool winds of 2026 blow through Scotland’s harsh, windy, and industrial soul, Glasgow’s streets carry an entirely different current this February. On the London floor of Apartment No:26, we open our windows to The Modern Institute on Aird’s Lane. Artist Marco Giordano, with his new exhibition titled “Gridlocks,” takes us beyond the glittering promises of the renewable energy transition—into the dark, metallic world of the underground and undersea cables that make it possible. Running until February 28, 2026, this installation questions how technology milks the earth, how energy becomes an extension of our bodies, and how we become locked inside these complex networks.
Geography of Mines: From Scotland to the Andes
Giordano’s journey in preparation for this exhibition serves almost as a summary of the modern world’s energy map. Starting from the massive wind farms on Scotland’s northeast coast, the artist traces a research path all the way to the “Lithium Triangle” between Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile.
Lithium and Copper: He follows the extraction processes of lithium—the heart of everything from our smartphones to electric vehicles—from the depths of mines in the Atacama Desert to the ports of Antofagasta.
New Colonialism: The artist emphasizes how the transition to renewable energy simply perpetuates extractivist models inherited from the colonial era.
Invisible Infrastructure: Anatomy of Cables
The starting point for the sculptures in the exhibition is the vast cable networks that silently feed our daily lives yet are rarely seen. Giordano collects discarded cables from Glasgow’s streets, disassembles them, and exposes their aluminum, copper, fiberglass, and plastic components.
Blending these materials with organic matter, personal objects, videos, and texts, the artist constructs infrastructure almost as a body. Natural forms—trees, flowers, nests—are rebuilt using these artificial substances; the sharp distinction between nature and the man-made dissolves. The resulting works possess both an inviting aesthetic and an uncanny threat, carrying an electrical friction.
“Disfluency”: Poetic Sabotage of Flow
Giordano uses art as a tool to disrupt capitalism’s smooth, frictionless logic of distribution. His aim is to create a form of disfluency.
“Language is the most fundamental instrument for the dissemination of ideology; it determines what is possible in the world and what agendas we can hold.”
Drawing from Belgian philosopher Isabelle Stengers’ concept of a culture of hesitation, the artist creates an artistic pause space to question established norms and political authority. The floating texts and performative elements in his works linger at the threshold between energy production and personal consumption, helping us reformulate our relationship with objects.
Exhibition Information
Artist: Marco Giordano
Exhibition Title: Gridlocks
Venue: The Modern Institute, Glasgow (Aird’s Lane)
Dates: Until February 28, 2026
Before leaving this floor of Apartment No:26, pause once more to consider the enormous metallic body that stretches from the Andes to Glasgow’s ports at the end of every plug you insert into a socket. Marco Giordano’s “Gridlocks” quietly exposes the hidden infrastructures we depend on, reminding us that even our most intimate gestures of daily life are tethered to vast, unseen networks of extraction and power.
