When a political system collapses, many an artistic practice goes down with it. This is obviously the case for those who were affiliated with the ruling power and its ideology, but the same is often true for the underground artist working in resistance to them. Such artists face the threat of a twofold damnatio memoriae: Forced to work in hiding, excluded from access to a state-regulated art infrastructure, they are usually known to a small circle only—either at home or abroad. Come the revolution, however, external interest in this oppositional art also often dwindles. This was, for

Taking us from the Skinner box to the present-day tourist attraction SeaWorld Orlando, Jan Peter Hammer’s film Tilikum, 2013–15, shot on HD video, was the ambitious centerpiece of this exhibition. It tells the story of the past century through the lens of the ethical complexities of human–animal relations, but it begins in the recent past, with a black screen and the recording of a 911 call made when the orca (or, less scientifically, “killer whale”) after which the piece is named drowned his trainer in full view of spectators in Orlando in 2010. She was Tilikum’s third victim.

The arc from the