Knock on wood. Emma Prats

Knock on wood stems from the gesture, expression, and popular superstition of the same name. It originates from the ancient belief that evil spirits inhabited wood; the contact between hand and surface interfered with these spirits’ ability to hear, creating an obstacle that prevented them from reversing the spoken wish. From this phenomenon, the work seeks to explore its persistence in the contemporary moment through the collective construction of narratives of meaning and the ritualization of the subject. It reveals an uncertainty linked to fear or desire, invoking a greater protective force. At the same time, it tends to the latency of materiality and language as forms of agency, acknowledging their capacity to structure and transform reality, functioning as a kind of amulet.