Art and Activism in Latin America – year I (2016)

Year 1 - 2016

ART AND ACTIVISM IN LATIN AMERICA is a project conceived by Despina, with the support from the Dutch organization Prince Claus Fund. The project extended for three years (2016, 2017 and 2018). Each year, a theme guided a series of actions and events, including occupations, workshops, talks, film screenings, exhibitions, public talks with important names from the contemporary artistic + activist thought and a residency programme. For this first edition, the theme was Public Space.

Theme’s presentation
by Bernardo José de Souza e Consuelo Bassanesi

The “Anti-Mubarak” protests at Tahrir Plaza, in Egypt, the “Indignados” at Puerta del Sol, in Madrid, the “Occupy Wall Street” at Liberty Plaza, in New York, the “Protest of the Plaza of Celestial Peace”, at Plaza Tiananmen, in Beijing, the “Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo”, in Buenos Aires, the “Ocuppy Cabral”, around the house of the governor of Rio de Janeiro, Sérgio Cabral – the importance of public spaces for political mobilizations is not a recent phenomenon and it takes different formats, however it is always in the streets that social movements shape up and gain weight.

Aditionally, many of the human rights, as freedom of expression, of reunion, information and movement, as well as the right to rest and leisure, depend on the availability of physical public space – its abscence, as well as its control, are detrimental and restrict civil freedom.

The notion of public space – whilst one of common use and possession of all – suffered diverse constructions and restrictions throughout the centuries. The privatization and normatization of such spaces, hinder the use of public spaces for public means, and weaken the access of spaces by different bodies and social demands. In theory, communal spaces and spaces which build up citizenship are inclusive and diverse; in practice, these spaces have their use increasingly controlled, in name of possession, order, law, codes of conduct.

Public manifestations in public spaces, not rarely in Brazil, in Latin America and internationally, terminate with police violence and criminalization of the protesters – see the case of the 23 Brazilian activists arrested on the previous day of the opening of the World Cup in Brazil and subsequently condemned for gang formation and planning of protests.

In this first edition, the theme of the project Art and Activism in Latin America revolved around diverse notions of public spaces, real or virtual: as a political arena where debates, protests and demands emerge and gain shape; as the environment where different cultures and social classes co-exist and colide; as a free zone for leisure and creative expression; as a place where personal and collective beliefs can be expressed and heard by the masses; as a space where knowledge and information can be exchanged; as a domain where civil and individual rights are submitted to disciplinary and control societies; as a territory for cultural resistance where communities should be granted access to means and infrastructure for self-development and organization.

We sought to promote an in-depth debate on the theme, and to develop a series of public actions that sought to defy the very comprehension and use of public space, inviting artists and activists whose practice are situated in the frontiers between art and politics. Equally, we are interested in practices that defy the role of cultural and political institutions, subverting the idea of the art-piece as a construction of material culture destinated to endure and to be exhibited in formal art spaces, destroying the frontier between the interior and the exterior and seeking in the streets the understanding of relevance and limitations of public spaces.

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The selected artists for the residency programme were: Crack Rodriguez (El Salvador), Jesus Bubu Negrón (Puerto Rico) and Luciana Magno (Brazil). The idea was to work in a variety of informal modes of education, such as workshops, public lectures, visits to schools/universities and an exhibition. Participation costs were fully covered by the Prince Claus Fund as part of its Network Partnership Programme, from which Despina is part of. Special guests for this fisrt edition were: Tania Bruguera, Suely RolnikRoberto Jacoby and Pablo León de la Barra.

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PROGRAMME

16 September (8 pm)
Talk with Brazilian psychoanalyst SUELY ROLNIK (Check video below)

29 September (8 pm)
Conversation with Argentinian artist ROBERTO JACOBY

17 to 21 October (2 – 6 pm)
Public workshops (free admisson)

21 October (6 pm)
Seminar ART AND ACTIVISM IN LATIN AMERICA at Casa França-Brasil
(in partnership with the Arts Institute of Rio de Janeiro State University – UERJ)

18 October (8 pm)
Talk with Cuban artist TANIA BRUGUERA and Mexican curator PABLO LEÓN DE LA BARRA

28 October (7 pm)
“In the Heat of the Battle” – exhibition opening with artists CRACK RODRIGUEZ, LUCIANA MAGNO and JESUS BUBU NEGRÓN. Click here for more information.

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ABOUT THE ARTISTS IN RESIDENCY

Crack Rodriguez (1980) lives and works in San Salvador, El Salvador. His practice and his actions are intrinsically related to the social context and popular culture, from where he builds strong bonds with the public, who react and /or engage and often become part of his piece, not as a passive spectator but as a catalyst that activates the social context.

Rodriguez is a member of the Fire Theory, San Salvador El Salvador. He has participated in several exhibitions and projects by the Curating Agency, Agency for Spiritual Guest Work, curated by Anne Brand Galvez; “From the Tangible to the Intangible”, 4th Edition Nomadic Center of Contemporary Art “Tropical Interzone” & “The Virtual Residency program” Zurich; “Relocating SAL”, curated by Claire Breukel and Lucas Arevalo Ernst, Hilger Gallery, Vienna; “Peripheral Spectacular”, curated by Eder Castillo, Mexico City & Poporopo Project, Guatemala City & la-embajada.org.; “Documenting Memory”, Art Center / South Florida (USA); “ Performance Festival – acciones en el espacio publico, Tegucigalpa, Honduras; “Landings 5”, Art Museum of the Americas, in Washington DC; “Landings 6 and 7”, Haydee Santamaria Gallery, Casa de las Americas, Havana, Cuba; “Landings 8”, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, Taiwan. Solo shows include: “Circunstancias de los restos”, Lokkus Arte Contemporáneo, Medellin, Colombia; “Neutropolitan Attack”, Eclectic Arts Festival, FEA, El Salvador.

More information
http://thefiretheory.org/crackrodriguez/

 

Jesus Bubu Negrón (1975) lives and works in San Juan, Porto Rico. His work is characterized by minimal interventions, the recontextualization of everyday objects and a relational approximation to artistic production as a revealing act of historical, social and economic proportions. Negrón lives in the neighborhood of Puerta de Tierra, in San Juan, where he is part of the Brigada PDT, a grassroots community organisation for the preservation and wellbeing of the neighborhood, its history and its people.

Upon completion of his first artist residency with M&M Proyectos in 2002 in Puerto Rico, Negron’s work has been displayed in renowned galleries and institutions around the world, both individually and collectively. Some of his most notable collaborations include: Abubuya Km0 project organised by Kiosko Galeria, Bolivia; The Obscenity of the Jungle with Proyectos Ultravioleta for SWAB Barcelona in Spain (2013); the 1st Bienal Tropical in Puerto Rico (2011), where he was awarded the “Golden Pineapple” prize for best artist; Interpretation of the Soneto de las estrellas with Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros in Mexico (2013), curated by Taiyana Pimentel; Trienal Poligráfica in Puerto Rico (2009), curated by Adriano Pedrosa, Julieta González and Jens Hoffmann; Sharjah Biennial in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (2007), curated by Mohammed Kazem, Eva Scharrer and Jonathan Watkins; Whitney Biennial in New York (2006), curated by Chrissie Iles and Phillipe Vergne; the T1 Torino Trienale in Italy (2005), curated by Francesco Bonami and Carolyn Christov–Bakargiev, and Tropical Abstraction at the Steidelijk Bureau Museum in Amsterdam (2005), curated by Ross Gortzak.

His work has been reviewed in major publications such as Flash Art, New York Times, Journal des Arts, LA Times, The Art Newspaper, Art Nexus and Frieze, among others.

More information
http://www.jesusbubunegron.com/

 

Luciana Magno (1987) lives and works between Belem and Fortaleza, Brazil. She is graduated in Visual Arts and Technology of the Image from the University of Amazonia, Belém. She also holds a Master Degree from the Federal University of Pará, in the same city. Her works deal with performance, often directed to photography and video, object and website. Magno’s research focuses on the body and performative actions. She has been interested in political, social and anthropological issues, related to the impact of the development of the Amazon region, in the north of Brazil. The integration of the body to the landscape and the environment is a key and recurrent element in her works, which have been exhibited in various spaces, such as Centro Cultural Banco do Nordeste, Fortaleza (2014); Museu de Arte do Estado do Pará – Art in Pará – Belém (2014) and Museu de Arte do Rio de Janeiro – MAR (2013). She was the winner of the 10th edition of Rede Nacional Funarte Artes Visuais Programme with the project “Telefone Sem Fio”, which crossed the country from north to south through highways and waterways. This project  led to a video and an audio file about Brazilian cultural diversity, its history and geography.

More information
http://www.lucianamagno.com

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PICTURES GALLERY (horizontal scrolling)
Photos by Frederico Pellachin, Consuelo Bassanesi and Thiago Pozes

 

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ART AND ACTIVISM IN LATIN AMERICA – YEAR I (2016)

Project conception & coordenation
Consuelo Bassanesi

Theme conception & development
Consuelo Bassanesi e Bernardo José de Souza

Curatorial Support
Bernardo José de Souza, Pablo Leon de la Barra

Production, Communication & Documentation
Frederico Pellachin

Press Relations
Rafael Millon

Financial & Legal Management
Clarice Goulart Correa

Production Assistant
Pablo Ferretti

Selection Committee (Residency Programme)
Consuelo Bassanesi, Bernardo José de Souza and Pablo León de la Barra

Logo and Graphic Design (publication)
Pablo Ugá

Photos (exhibition opening)
Thiago Pozes

Thanks to
Alexandre Rodolfo de Oliveira, Alexandre Sá, Bernardo Mosqueira, Bertan Selim, Helena Celestino, Leila Lak,  Pablo León de la Barra, Prince Claus Fund.

 

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Despina Residency Programme + Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London

March 2016

During the month of March 2016, Despina Residency Programme led a special cycle in partnership with Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. Four newly graduated artists were selected and commissioned – through an open call conducted by the British institution – to participate in our programme. Beatrice Vermeir, Carlotta Novella, Helena de Pulford and Sarah Crew worked together in Despina art studios (located in the old downtown area of Rio de Janeiro), received curatorial support and participated in a series of activities, including workshops, talks and seminars, as well as visits to other studio spaces and cultural venues.

 

beatrice

Beatrice Vermeir is a practicing artist, poet and critical writer based in London. Since graduating from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, BA Fine Art Sculpture, in June 2015 she has undertaken a residency at Grizedale Arts in Cumbria, where she was involved in a project combining local food history with local and historical figure John Ruskin’s experimental educational philosophy. The activities consisted of fermentation and cheese-making workshops as well as the running of a low-cost community cafe and vegetable garden. In November 2015, Beatrice collaborated with London based collective HouseRules to develop and realise a programme of artist-led walks in Peckham as part of the ArtLicks weekend. Beatrice is continuing to collaborate with this organisation, which focusses on re-purposing empty spaces in the city as educational or art-making spaces, in the development of a free summer school for 2016. Beatrice has also been involved in the capacity of director and costume designer in the theatrical production “You Are Me And I Am You” which played in late February at the VAULT Festival, Waterloo, London.

 

carlota

Carlotta Novella, originally from Venice, where she graduated with a BA in Construction Management, she now lives and works in London where she graduated in 2015 from MA Architecture: Cities and Innovation at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. She is currently working with the art and architectural practice public works. Carlotta’s work addresses contemporary socio-political and cultural issues through a spatial lens, focusing on the interplay of use within and between private and public spaces. Her fifth year project, ‘Industrious Neighbourhoods’, proposed alternative urban strategies and design interventions to facilitate home-based work for social housing tenants. A great believer in collaborative work and making, her projects include temporary, socio-spatial and mobile structures, architectural drawings, participatory workshops, events and performances. More information: http://carlottanovellaworks.com/

 

helena

Helena de Pulford lives and works in London (England). Graduated with a first class bachelors degree from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, she was awarded the Cass Art Prize and selected for the Acme associate studio programme. Helena’s artistic practice is primarily sculptural but also incorporates performance, writing and moving image. Her work reinterprets European visual history through the lens of contemporary gender theory. Recent exhibitions include: 3×3 Collaborations for Art Licks Weekend 12 Orpen Walk, London (2015); Supermarket Sweep, Nice Galley, London (2015); Degree Show CSM School of Art, London (2015); Open Studios, 1 Granary Square, London (2014); Talking about Pink Salmon, 1 Granary Square, London (2014); Copy, Elthorne Road Project Space, London (2014) and Para-Site, Concourse Gallery, London (2013). More information: http://www.helenadepulford.com/

 

sarah

Sarah Crew lives and works in Bristol and London, graduating with a distinction in MA Photography from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London in 2015. She is a mixed media artist and writer, working across installation, film, sound and live performance. Her research-based practice explores the changing relationships, connections and points of disjuncture between the human, the animal and the landscape. The implications of these are scrutinised through contemporary technology within an increasingly tactile dualistic environment. More information: http://www.sarahcrew.com

 

 

 

For their collaborative project, the group of artists set out to re-imagine how the residency studio could be inhabited. In this, they moved away tables dispersed across the room (one per artist) to imagine one structure that would allow each practice to co-pollinate. This structure functioned as a built strategy not only for inhabiting the studio, but also for incorporating each artists lived experience during this transitory inhabitation of Rio de Janeiro.

From this brief, the group designed a ‘core structure’ that could adapt and develop for different functions, contexts and ideas. The name for this structure and the their collaborative project was ‘Trânsito-Rio’ (‘transitory’ being ‘transitorio’ in Portuguese). In addition to working collaboratively, each artist also worked on individual projects. The themes explored included collaborative work and communal making within the dwelling space of the home, alternative modes of social organisation, connections and points of disjuncture between the human, the animal and the landscape, gendered political activity and emerging feminist art practices in Brazil.

You can follow the development of “Transit-Rio” project through the web blog – http://transito-rio.weebly.com – which serves as a documentation platform of the processes experienced by the group in Rio de Janeiro.

They also participated in the First International Seminar of Art Schools at Parque Lage, where they were able to share their experiences with the public. And in partnership with MAR – Museu de Arte do Rio and Despina, artist Sarah Crew held a special workshop in collaboration with the education department of the museum. The public in the space was invited to build “umbrellas”, with the objective of exploring the challenging scenarios of the 21st century. The structure of the umbrella became an object for visual discussions and playful explorations. As new landscapes were added to the structure, the umbrella as a whole came to reflect the curvature of the earth, resurfacing as a creative field to be investigated from above. Once completed, these three-dimensional sculptures (which the artist named “brella-scapes”) also took the form of an installation, which was built throughout the activity.

At the end of the residency, a special exhibition was opened to the public at Despina, presenting the results of this collective experience. Check some pictures below.

 

Photo Gallery (horizontal scrolling)

Diagonale

Every year

Canadian contemporary art center Diagonale has been a partner of Despina since 2015 in a special project which grants artists who live and work in Quebéc to participate in our residency program.

This initiative is supported by the Conseil des Arts de Montréal and it aims to encourage the experimentation and development of contemporary artistic practices and promote the international mobility of artists who use fiber in terms of material and work concept.

The residences have a duration of 1 month and are 100% focused on the process, allowing the visiting artist a production in response to the new environment and to the new dialogues, which include activities such as workshops, meetings with curators, visits to art studios and other cultural spaces as well as an open studio event at the end of the residency.

To learn more about Diagonale, visit www.artdiagonale.org

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Chronology

2019

Selected artist: Mégane Voghell

Lives and works in Montreal, Canada. She is interested in the many ways the world can be experienced in the absence of a physical body. Through installation, (textual) correspondence, drawing and video, her work call into question the binaries of transcendence/immanence and real/virtual.

Through devices — both tangible and intangible — Voghell utilizes a personal mythology pointing to an experience beyond the lived world, but drawn from a very real subject. Her work emerges from the desire to define the peculiarities of the elemental and phenomenological forces surrounding us in order to better manipulate and reinvent them.

Her work has been featured in various screenings and exhibitions including “harbinger” at Eastern Bloc (2015), at FME in Rouyn-Noranda at Center l’Écart (2015), at Le Lobe in Chicoutimi (2016), at Paris Variation Fair (2017) and more recently at Calaboose Gallery in Pointe-Saint-Charles (2019) and Vicki Gallery in Newburgh (2019). Her work has been included in publications such as Nut II, ETC MEDIA and Cigale. She also curated the “Episode Laurier” event in June 2018.

Check here Voghell’s profile page which includes some photos and a curatorial statement (in Portuguese only).

2018

Selected artists: Chloë Lum and Yannick Desranleau

Chloë Lum and Yannick Desranleau are multidisciplinary visual artists based in Montreal, Canada. Their work focuses on theatricality and the choreographic; in their performance work but also in their interest in staging tableaus and working with ephemeral materials that can be said to perform through redeployment and decay. The duo’s recent works investigate the agency of objects, the material condition of the body, and the transformative potential that bodies and objects exert upon each other. These interests are informed by Chloë’s experience with chronic illness and its effect on their collaboration as well the duo’s exploration of narrative tropes from literature, theatre and television.

Recently, their work has taken an autobiographical twist, dealing with chronic disease, and how it alters the materiality of the body and affects its communication with the external world. It is important for them to show the body in action, in order to illustrate the haptic discomforts and discoveries during a first contact between two bodies ; this is why performance and video have become two of our favourite mediums, in transition from their installation works.

The research of the duo in Rio de Janeiro focused on Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector’s letter archives and also on the experimentation with costumes and accessories, which will be used in a future video performance.  While continuing on the theme of chronic disease, Chloë and Yannick want to approach it from the transformation angle – a sensorial and physical phenomenon that they want to illustrate by the phenomenon of the « second skin ». Thus, the duo is interested in deepening their investigation on the elasticity of fabrics and their capacity to give the impression of transforming the body shape by these properties – until perhaps prolonging it.

Lum & Desranleau have exhibited widely, notably at the Center for Books and Paper Arts, Columbia College, Chicago; the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; the Kunsthalle Wien; BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art; Whitechapel Project Space, London; the University of Texas, Austin; the Confederation Centre Art Gallery, Charlottetown; the Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto; and the Darling Foundry, Montreal. The duo is also known on the international music scene as co-founders of the avant‐rock group AIDS Wolf, for whom they also produced award-winning concert posters under the name Séripop. Their work is in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Montreal Museum of Fine Art, and the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal.

Check here the duo’s profile page which includes some photos, videos and a curatorial statement (in Portuguese only).

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2017
Selected artist: Lorna Bauer

lorna_bauer_2017_thumbBorn in Toronto, lives and works in Montreal (Canada). She has recently presented her work at The Loon, Toronto; CK2 Gallery, New York; The Darling Foundry, Montreal; Model Projects, Vancouver; the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal among other places. Bauer has participated in numerous national and international residencies, including stays at The Couvent des Récollets, Paris; Quebec-New York Residency funded through the Conseil des arts et lettres du Québec; The Banff Centre, Alberta and the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Florida; working with the artist Josiah McElheny. She operates the artist project space L’escalier (together with Jon Knowles and Vincent Bonin) in Montréal.

Lorna Bauer works mainly in photography, installation and most recently, glass and bronze. Her formal language and use of materials alludes to ideas developed through city planning, and urban theory. Her work focuses on specific examples of architecture, urban planning and psycho-geography within the 20th Century. Her projects are generally characterized as site related, leading to a final result that has responded to a specific place and context. Interests are wide and range from topics such as the Paris city plan, in particular the arcades and the underground mushroom cultivation in the Parisian catacombs, Haussmannization, North American west coast utopian gardens from the nineteen sixties to Walter Benjamin’s letters to his lover, describing the Island of Ibiza, while in exile.  All of her projects deal with spaces and how they shape individual perceptions and the correlation between the natural and the built environment.

Check here Bauer’s profile page which includes some photos, videos and a curatorial statement (in Portuguese only).

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2016
Selected artist: Romeo Gongora

romeo_gongora_2016_thumbRomeo is a Canadian-Guatemalan visual artist. His participatory art works employs radical pedagogy to promote socio-political and human awareness. Romeo collaborated, amongst others, with the Rencontres de Bamako (Mali), CCA – Lagos (Nigeria), Centre of Art Torun (Poland), Festival Belluard (Switzerland), HISK (Belgium), The Office (Berlin) and Open School East (London). In 2007, he took up a two-year residence at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten (Amsterdam). In 2009, he represented Canada as an artist in residence at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin) and at the Acme Studios (London) in 2016.

What would identity look like in a utopian world? Awaken Dream. New Models of Identity is a grassroots community art research that harnesses the capacity of creativity to offer a space for imagination as a tool for self-empowerment. Romeo’s residency project consisted of engaging a group of people from the local community of Rio de Janeiro to imagine a clothing collection for a utopian society. The residency culminated in a fashion performance-installation about otherness, cross-culture/religion, which brought individuals and groups in contact.

Check here Gongora’s profile page which includes some photos, videos and a curatorial statement (in Portuguese only).

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2015
Selected artist: Karen Kraven

karen_kraven_2015_thumbKaren lives and works in Montreal, Canada. Her recent solo exhibitions include the ICA at the Maine College of Art, Portland, ME (2015); Darling Foundry, Montreal (2014) and Mercer Union, Toronto (2015). Reviews of her works have been published in Canadian Art Magazine and Artforum. Karen has received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Quebec Council for the Arts as well as a fellowship from the Dale & Nick Tedeschi Foundation. She is represented by Parisian Laundry in Montreal.

Karen is inspired by the clothing and accessories that athletes and spectators wear. She is attracted to the patterns in a flurry of basketball players, the competition of their bright jerseys and the distracting crowds, waving scarves in the background of the free throw line or the wavy, moiré pattern from an announcer wearing a striped shirt. Like Harlequin, whose role in Comedia del Arte was to distract, the costumes of athletes, spectators and sportsman are distinctly designed to standout like a bird of paradise, but also to camouflage each individual, like in a flock of birds. These flashy markings emphasize speed and movement of the body, while potentially distracting an opponent’s eye.

In her work, Karen has been making handmade fishing nets, photographing mesh sports fabric and stretching spandex fabric stretched over partial body forms. She has also been making sculptures of gymnastics costumes and horse race lady hats. Her main interest is the gender politics of sports clothing, and the latent sexuality embedded in how much or how little is covered up as well as the tight or loose opposition when fabrics and garments are viewed as a second skin.

The artist’s research lately has been focused on early sports costumes, designed by constructivist artist Varvara Stepanova, who exaggerated and abstracted the appearance of movement of the body, by using geometric forms and lines, like racing stripes. She has also been researching the surrealist fashion designer Elsa Schiaperelli, who designed the famous shoe hat and lobster dress.

After an open call led by Canadian institution Diagonale, with the support of Le Conseil des Arts, Montreal, Karen was selected and commissioned to join Despina Residency Programme. While in Rio de Janeiro, she was interested in the history of textile design in Brazil and in the use of recycled materials in handmade textiles, rugs and bags. She also collected different kinds of fabrics found in local shops around the SAARA commercial area and created sculptures from combining these materials.

Check here Karen’s profile page which includes some photos and a curatorial statement (in Portuguese only).

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Iran-Rio Art Connection

Setembro 2015

Em setembro de 2015, jovens talentos das artes visuais do Irã estiveram no Rio para uma residência artística. Durante todo o mês, nossos ateliês de residência foram ocupados por quatro artistas iranianos que tiveram a chance de explorar os seus trabalhos em um novo contexto cultural. Ao final do processo, uma exposição marcou o resultado desta experiência.

Artistas participantes: Ali Zanjani, Amin Aghaei, Farnaz Jahanbin e Shadi Ghadirian.

Shadi e Farnaz foram especialmente convidadas para o projeto. Já Ali e Amin foram selecionados por um painel de curadores e artistas brasileiros formado por Bernardo José de Souza (curador), Daniela Labra (crítica de arte e curadora), Ernesto Neto (artista), Marta Mestre (curadora do Instituto Inhotim – MG) e Miguel Sayad (diretor do Largo das Artes).

Uma série de eventos paralelos, públicos e gratuitos foi realizada simultaneamente ao período da residência com o intuito de potencializar o diálogo inter-cultural, além de promover o trabalho em rede entre artistas do Oriente Médio e do Brasil.

PROGRAMAÇÃO

3 – 6 setembro
Artistas visitam a 31ª Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, a convite do curador da mostra Charles Esche.

12 setembro
Conversa com a artista Shadi Ghadirian, seguida de brunch.*
Local: Despina | Largo das Artes
Horário: 11 horas
Entrada gratuita (sujeito a lotação do espaço)
* Este evento faz parte da programação especial da feira ArtRio 2014.

16 setembro
Visita dos artistas ao Colégio Pedro II em Realengo, Rio de Janeiro
Horário: 14 horas

23 setembro
Conversa com os artistas na Universidade Cândido Mendes, Rio de Janeiro
Horário: 11 horas

25 setembro
Abertura da exposição final* + concerto de música tradicional Persa com a artista Farnaz Jahanbin e o pianista Tomas Gonzaga
Local: Despina | Largo das Artes
Horário: 19 horas

Conheça abaixo os artistas participantes

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Ali Zanjani é um artista iraniano que vive entre Dubai e Teerã. Os seus trabalhos refletem sobre a herança sociocultural do Irã ao longo das agitadas transformações políticas que ocorreram no país nos últimos 35 anos. Destaque para uma série bem humorada que inclui registros fotográficos de praticantes da luta livre, o esporte nacional iraniano. O esporte também faz parte de uma outra série, criada com base em fotografias perdidas de um time de basquete feminino, pré-revolução de 1979. Estas imagens de mulheres sem a burca são únicas e estritamente proibidas no regime político atual do Irã.

Desde 2011, Ali trabalha com o Museum Salsali de Dubai. Em 2012, teve o seu trabalho selecionado pelo Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Teerã e pela Feira de Arte de Beirute. Atualmente, o artista tem se dedicado a inúmeros projetos, incluindo “Live Moment of Wrestling”, “Life Is Too Short”, “Show Off” e “Just Between Us”.

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Amin Aghaei nasceu no Irã em 1982 e passou a infância sem uma moradia fixa, deslocando-se com a família pelo país devido à guerra Irã-Iraque (1980-1988). Esta natureza itinerante fez com que ele descobrisse o desenho, que acabou funcionando como uma válvula de escape às condições adversas por que passava. Quando seus pais puderam finalmente se estabelecer num local fixo, Amin conseguiu se concentrar mais em sua arte. Com a repressão política no Irã, começou a desenhar caricaturas e este estilo logo tomou conta de suas pinturas, por isso o tom crítico e humorístico de seus trabalhos. Além do desenho e da pintura, as suas práticas também compreendem escultura e vídeo. A obra de Amin assume um realismo mágico com uma temática sui generis para o Irã, daí este artista ter sido uma escolha unânime do comitê de seleção para este projeto.

Fica aqui registrado o nosso agradecimento especial a Azadeh Vafardari e Amirpasha Shafaei, que viabilizaram a presença de Amin no Brasil.

combo_farnaz
Farnaz Jahanbin é uma artista iraniana reconhecida internacionalmente, que utiliza a escrita persa e árabe para criar interpretações modernas da antiga arte da caligrafia. Suas pinturas têm formas abstratas e apresentam interpretações mais tradicionais dessas escritas.

Farnaz é também uma cantora clássica persa. Como mulher em seu país, ela não tem permissão para se apresentar na frente de um público misto. No Rio de Janeiro, porém, a artista se apresentou ao público, entoando canções da música tradicional Persa num pequeno concerto que marcou a abertura da exposição “Iran_Rio Art Connection”. Conheça mais sobre o trabalho de Farnaz aqui.

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Shadi Ghadirian é uma importante artista iraniana cujo trabalho já foi exibido em grandes museus e galerias pelo mundo, incluindo o Museu de Belas Artes de Boston e o Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Nascida em 1974 no Teerã, Shadi estudou fotografia na Azad University. A sua prática artística busca refletir sobre as questões que envolvem o tradicional e o moderno na cultura do seu país, principalmente a questão da mulher muçulmana no Irã, um assunto que ainda repercute em todo o mundo.

Em “The Qajar Series”, realizada entre 1998 e 2001, Shadi fotografou mulheres vestidas com roupas tradicionais “Qajar”, justapostas com objetos modernos típicos da cultura ocidental, como um “boom box” ou uma lata de Coca-Cola. Já na série “Como todos os dias”, produzida logo depois de se casar, Shadi revela de maneira crítica e irônica a rotina mundana e repetitiva que é reservada à maioria das mulheres em seu país.

Estes trabalhos evidenciam a preocupação da artista em destacar o papel das mulheres iranianas dentro de uma sociedade em permanente conflito entre a tradição e o moderno. Para conhecer mais sobre Shadi e sua obra, visite o site: http://shadighadirian.com/

 

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IRAN-RIO ART CONNECTION
Conceito:
Consuelo Bassanesi, Leila Lak, Miguel Sayad
Direção executiva: Consuelo Bassanesi
Direção de produção: Leila Lak
Assistente de produção / arte e conteúdo multimídia: Frederico Pellachin
Suporte curatorial: Bernardo José de Souza
Comitê de seleção: Daniela Labra, Bernardo José de Souza, Ernesto Neto, Marta Mestre, Miguel Sayad.
Agradecimentos especiais: Rose Issa Projects, Azadeh Vafardari e Amirpasha Shafaie

Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development é uma instituição holandesa que apoia artistas, organizações culturais e pensadores que atuam em locais onde a liberdade de expressão é limitada por conflitos, pobreza e repressão.