‘The Acquired Inability to Escape’ is part of ‘Internal Affairs’, a series of works Hirst exhibited in his first solo show in a public gallery at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, in 1991. Explaining that he liked “the near nonsense of the logic”, Hirst intended the series as a means to, “look into myself, to work out or try to work out why my body is separated from my mind or if indeed it is.”[1]

The work’s title came before the piece. It originated from a conversation Hirst had with Ulrich Loock, then Director of the Kunsthalle Bern, in which Loock mistranslated the title of Bruce Nauman’s ‘Learned Helplessness in Rats’ (1988) as ‘The Acquired Inability to Escape’.[2]

The rectangular glass and steel vitrine is divided into two areas, Hirst describes its dimensions, size and shape as the perfect mathematical formula. The larger space contains a desk chair and a table on which cigarettes, a lighter, and a full ashtray sit. Of the use of cigarettes in the piece Hirst explains, “I want a glimpse of an idea of what it’s like to die.”[3] The sealed empty compartment in front of the desk works to produce both a narrative mystery and a feeling of entrapment. The artist explains the work’s conceptual meaning: “It is like you are spiritually excluded or something, you are getting into the space, and then there is nothing on the other side […] the whole thing traps you and keeps you trapped.”[4]

Between 1993 and 2008, Hirst created four variations of ‘The Acquired Inability to Escape’, inverting, dividing and purifying the original through painting it white.