Inter Caetera Divinae

(Among other…to the Divine)

36 x 38 cm

Engraving and painting on aluminum board

2016

The title to a papal bull from 1493 issued by Pope Alexander VI Inter caetera (“Among other”) was a papal bull issued by Pope Alexander VI on4 May 1493, which granted to Spain (the Crowns of Castile and Aragon) all lands to the “west and south” of a pole-to-pole line 100 leagues west and south of any of the islands of the Azores or the Cape Verde islands. This piece is refered directly to the book “Nomos of the earth” written by Carl Schmitt. Schmitt analysis of Nomos of the earth, argues that lines drawn between European soil and the so-calls “free space” of non-European soil, were “the facilitation of the colonial (political, military and economic) land appropriation of this New World. Drawing lines, which divided and distributed the entire earth, was made possible by what Schmitt called «global linear thinking», an integral part of the emerging spatial consciousness of modernity. (in The International Political Thought of Carl Schmitt, edited by Louiza Odysseos and Fabio Petito.)