a living _ a killing [from the series anti-epifania] (2024)

In subject / subjected and a living / a killing, Daniel de Paula condenses complex power structures into deceptively simple linguistic pairings. Each title stages a minimal shift in meaning, where one term destabilises or shadows the other. What appears straightforward becomes structurally unstable.

The works examine power through the lens of global finance and corporate systems, foregrounding questions of labour and agency. Who is the subject, and who is subjected? Who extracts value, and who must chemically enhance themselves in order to remain competitive? The incorporation of cognitive-enhancing substances into the material composition underscores the pressure to optimise performance, revealing how bodies become sites of extraction within economic systems.

In a living / a killing, language exposes its own violence. “Killing” evokes bodily harm, yet in financial vernacular, “making a killing” signals profit and success. The shift from physical destruction to economic triumph reveals how aggression is absorbed and normalised within capitalist speech.

Across these works, wordplay becomes a structural device through which systems of power are both mirrored and destabilised. The modest scale of the paintings contrasts with the magnitude of the forces they invoke. In this sense, they speak to an uneven end of the world: not a singular catastrophe, but a slow erosion of agency, where subjects become subjected, and survival itself becomes a competitive performance. The collapse here is linguistic, economic, and embodied—a quiet unravelling embedded in the very terms through which contemporary life is organised.