Decadence, Now.

For the first edition of City of Art, ‘Decadence, Now.’ was produced as an exhibition of artworks, objects, music and paraphernalia from the Decadent movement, curated by Andrew Borg Wirth.

This project claimed, to a great extent, that the critical study of decadence should not be confined to its traditional association with morbidity, a cult of artificiality, exoticism and aestheticism. Although these topics dominate the thematic texture of the decadent movement, as well as its lasting influence upon twentieth-century culture, they also continue to fuel a whole new wave of contemporary decadence in visual culture. ‘Decadence, Now.’ argues that decadence is more than a movement or compendium of transgressive themes and images by which it is usually identified; it is a zeitgeist which has been carried on well into the twenty-first century, as it continues to discuss the future of the end of world.