Artist: Elena Damiani 

Impact Structures
August 18, 2016 – September 24, 2016
Galerie Nordenhake Stockholm
Stockholm, Sweden

Working with collage, sculpture, video and installations Peruvian artist Elena Damiani employs the disciplines of geology, geography, cartography, archaeology and astronomy to reinterpret such categorisations and the way we understand the world around us. Her fictional and constructed landscapes propose alternative readings of geological time, history and humankind’s classifications of evidence. For her first exhibition at Galerie Nordenhake Damiani uses sources such as NASA, the Lunar and Planetary Institute and the U.S. Geological Survey repository to present a framework of quasi-evidence on celestial bodies like meteorites and comets and their landfalls. The works in the exhibition comprise documentation of traces of surface impacts, celestial transits, and cosmic debris left by impact events. Scientific evidence merges with fiction revealing how technology informs our representations of nature, and examining what we actually know about the natural world and how that knowledge is produced.

• Happenings

Artists: Vyacheslav Akhunov, Jonathas de Andrade, Meris Angioletti, Alexander Apóstol, Marwa Arsanios, Vartan Avakian, Azorro Group, Zbyněk Baladrán, Sammy Baloji, Yason Banal, Guy Ben-Ner, Michael Blum and Damir Nikšić, Deanna Bowen, Pavel Braila, Andrea Büttner, Robert Cauble, Aslı Çavuşoğlu, Park Chan-Kyong, Chen Chieh-jen, Chto delat/What is to be done?, Josef Dabernig, Elena Damiani, Shezad Dawood, Manon de Boer, Jos de Gruyter &  Harald Thys, Angela Detanico, Annika Eriksson, Kota Ezawa, Antanas Gerlikas, Tamar Guimarães, Dan Halter, Annemarie Jacir, Ranbir Kaleka, Beryl Korot, Nestor Kruger, Rafael Lain, Lars Laumann, Aníbal López, Reynier Leyva Novo, Basim Magdy, Cinthia Marcelle, Bradley McCullum & Jacqueline Tarry, Anja Medved, Tracey Moffatt, Ivana Müller, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Phu Nam Thuc Ha, Ho Tzu Nyen, Ahmet Ögüt, Agnieszka Polska, Jenny Perlin, Daniela Paes Leao, Elodie Pong, The Propeller Group, Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz,  Sara Ramo, Tracey Rose, Sona Safaei, Edwin Sánchez, Heino Schmid, Michael Stevenson, Stephen Sutcliffe, Yukihiro Taguchi, Prilla Tania, Alexander Ugay, Ulla Von Brandenburg, Wok the Rock, Zhou Xiaohu, Sun Xun, Jin-me Yoon, Dale Yudelman, Helen Zeru, Chen Zhou.

Project 35: The Last Act
ICI Independent Curators International, organized by Andrey Misiano
August 8, 2015 – January 31, 2016
Garage Museum of Contemporary Art
Moscow, Russia

Project 35: The Last Act is an unprecedented exhibition of single-channel video works that reveal today’s global connectivity through art. It is the result of an extensive five-year project by Independent Curators International (ICI), which exclusively culminates at Garage. Project 35: The Last Act presents 70 video works from artists living and working all over the world—from Zimbabwe and Guatemala to Japan, from the USA and New Zealand to Kyrgyzstan, that have been selected by 70 leading curators who are part of ICI’s extensive network, including, Chus Martinez, Viktor Misiano, Hou Hanru, and Hans Ulrich Obrist. Since 2010, different versions of the exhibition have been presented in over 50 institutions around the world. As the finale, this is the first time they will be screened together, providing a unique, global overview of video art now.

Showcasing many leading artists in Russia for the first time, the exhibition is also unusual for its “cinema” style presentation in Garage’s new auditorium. Each week there is a new, daily program of video works, which are each especially selected for audiences by eleven key creative people in Moscow and Saint-Petersburg, such as Olga Chernishova (artist), Anton Belov (Garage Director), and Elena Yushina (independent curator), based on their personal interests and tastes. Visitors can watch for half an hour, an hour, or four hours—to see the “top picks” that each selector has made and why they liked them—and can keep coming back to see more works from more selectors over the winter months, all through January 2016. In this way the exhibition offers a flexible viewing opportunity for visitors to enjoy on their own time.

Project 35 began as the first international survey of what curators thought was the most interesting video art happening around the world since the new millennium, further revealing the ways in which artists are wanting to communicate today. To begin, 35 international curators selected 35 video works that ranged from reinterpretations of traditional philosophical propositions, to uprisings and protests in South Africa and emerging youth culture in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, to environmental exploitation in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Then, in 2012, 35 new curators selected 35 new videos works, expanding the reach of the project to reflect the continued rise of video art as an important medium for artists. Together, the works reveal the diversity of approaches practitioners are taking to the medium, using various animation techniques, as well as borrowing from the language of cinema, performance, and even YouTube, to produce work that weaves between documentary and fiction formats.

The weekly screening program that takes place in the Garage Auditorium has been prepared in collaboration with Russian artists (Olga Chernyshova, Evgeny Granilshikov), film critics (Alexey Artamonov, Boris Nelepo), journalists (Maria Kravtsova), art critics (Alexander Evangeli), curators (Elena Yushina, Aperto gallery; Maya Kuzina, Documentary film center; Andrey Misiano, Garage) directors (Anton Belov, Garage) and theatre director who will choose their personal favourites from the wide range of works.

• Happenings

Artists: Rosenda Álvarez Faro and Grabadores por Grabadores, Carlos Amorales, Francisca Aninat, Rodrigo Arteaga, Myrna Báez, David Beltrán, Hernaín Bravo, Fernando Bryce, Waltercio Caldas, Manuel Calderón, Johanna Calle, Luis Camnitzer, Tania Candiani, Claudia Casarino, Albert Chong, Lourdes Correa-Carlo, Elena Damiani, Annalee Davis, Paula Dittborn, Frances Gallardo, Carlos Garaicoa, Félix González Torres, María Elena González, Karlo Andrei Ibarra, José Iraola, Alfredo Jaar, Voluspa Jarpa, Ivelisse Jiménez, Leandro Katz, Lucia Koch, Irene Kopelman, Ricardo Lanzarini, Nicola López, Claudia Martínez Garay, Vik Muniz, Mônica Nador, Jesús Bubu Negrón, Rivane Neuenschwander, José Ortiz-Pagán, Amalia Pica, Isabel Ramírez, Sandra Ramos, Rosângela Rennó, Verónica Rivera, Nicolás Robbio, Mariana Rondón, Graciela Sacco, Rosemberg Sandoval, Oscar Santillán, Giancarlo Scaglia, the SEMEFO Collective, Daniel Senise, Edra Soto, Adán Vallecillo, and Alicia Villarreal.

Displaced Images / Images in Space
The 4th Poly/Graphic San Juan Triennial: Latin America and the Caribbean
Curators: Gerardo Mosquera (Chief Curator), Vanessa Hernández, Alexia Tala
October 24, 2015 – February 28, 2016
Institute of Puerto Rican Culture
San Juan, Puerto Rico

The Poly/Graphic Triennial of San Juan, Latin America, and the Caribbean represents the transformation of what was, for more than 30 years, one of the most important art events in Latin America and the Caribbean: the San Juan Biennial of Latin American Graphics. Created in 2004, the Triennial promotes experimentation in the graphic arts, stimulating the combination of traditional printmaking and contemporary practices within a different curatorial theme each year.

Under the curatorial team of distinguished art critic Gerardo Mosquera (Cuba) as chief curator and co-curators Alexia Tala Barril (Chile) and Vanessa Hernandez Gracia (Puerto Rico), this 4th edition, titled Displaced Images/Images in Space will examine the shift of the graphic image between fields, supports, habits, and techniques, and especially its projection into three-dimensional spaces.

This edition of the Triennial will feature 55 artists from Puerto Rico, Latin America, and the Caribbean, as well as Latino artists residing in the United States.

This ambitious edition will include exhibitions, an educational program, events and publications throughout Puerto Rico, expanding beyond the capital city of San Juan to include spaces on the periphery and in other municipalities. As well, galleries and alternative spaces across the island will organize exhibitions in salute to the Triennial.

As a fundamental part of this 4th Triennial, an educational program has been designed whose aim is to develop and nurture creative thinking through participatory activities aimed at a variety of audiences and focusing on the exploration and collective recognition of the aesthetic experience. The project will feature activities that go beyond looking at art and entering the classroom as passive and hierarchical experiences.

The highlight of the workshops and lectures will be an international symposium, titled “The Contemporary Image: From Symbolic Space as Hegemony to Symbolic Space as Problematization,” to be held on October 25, 2015 in the theater of the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. Panelists scheduled to take part are Luis Camnitzer, Marta, Gili, Alfredo Jaar, Mari Carmen Ramírez, Cuauhtemoc Medina, and Beatríz Santiago Muñoz. This opening summit will bring together internal and external audiences of the 4th Triennial, and is aimed at promoting a discussion of the contemporary image, and the image in general, as social experience.

Amalia Pica, Venn Diagrams (In the spotlight), 2011, Focos en trípode, sensor de movimiento, gel de iluminación y grafito sobre la pared, Dimensiones variables, Obra: Cortesía de la Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros

• Happenings

Artists: Iván Argote, Arocha + Schraenen, Lothar Baumgarten, Matthew Buckingham, Elena Damiani, Adler Guerrier, Jorge Pedro Núñez, Edgar Orlaineta, Laercio Redondo, Matheus Rocha Pitta, Sergio Vega.

The Devil is in the details
Curated by Jesus Fuenmayor
September 17 – November 20, 2015
KaBe Contemporary
Miami, FL, USA

The title of the exhibition “The Devil is in the details” pretends to point towards the details’ appearances in a work of art that unexpectedly allow viewers to comprehend the work (and even history) in a different way, even when this reading betrays our expectations or completely twists a work’s initial intention. Instead of just speaking about how important the use of historiography is for this group of artists, the show draws attention to what Roland Barthes used to call the “Punctum.” That is, that detail in an image (or work) that escapes its own structure, shooting out like an “arrow” towards the viewer. The artists selected for this exhibition have turned to the representation of history not just as material itself but also as means by which to criticize how history is constructed. They are not just interested in the past tense or simply reviving archival strategies, but in putting the past in relation to the present and the future, creating overlapping temporalities that bring disparate moments together. scottrade site down

• Happenings

Artist: Elena Damiani.

Testigos: un catálogo de fragmentos / Sediments: an assemblage of remains
Curated by Cecilia Delgado and Amanda de la Garza
September 5, 2015 – February 7, 2016
MUAC Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporaneo
Mexico City, Mexico

La propuesta de Elena Damiani forma parte del programa curatorial Intemperie Sur, que parte de la idea del intersticio como hendidura que media entre dos partes de un mismo cuerpo. Opera desde la posibilidad de vincular el adentro y el afuera del museo, por ello propone que las intervenciones artísticas sucedan en terrazas y patios.

La instalación Testigos: un catálogo de fragmentos se presenta como un interludio espacio-temporal. Conformada por dos esculturas en travertino que aluden a la naturaleza discontinua del tiempo y a la aparición de espacios liminales dentro de éste, Damiani revela los intersticios que el propio material contiene. Estas fisuras -hiatos o lagunas en el tiempo geológico- son los puntos de interés crítico, ya que representan la evidencia de ciertos quiebres, filtraciones y discordancias, factores que señalan sutilmente la existencia de un ‘tiempo perdido’.

En los vacíos es donde se formula un espacio para el cuestionamiento de la continuidad y la estabilidad de lo que entendemos como espacio-tiempo. Si bien, se considera que el tiempo ayuda a revelar la esencia de las cosas: la apariencia de una ilustración cuyos bordes han sido manoseados por un número de personas, el tono oscurecido de un árbol o la rugosidad de una piedra son testigos silenciosos que en su composición material contienen una serie de capas de información que representan un transitar del tiempo.

La primera escultura es una serie de 34 piezas talladas en travertino, son prismas cortados a la vena provenientes de la misma piedra; este corte permite ver las diferentes capas de sedimentación características de la composición de este material. Cada uno se encuentra dispuesto uno junto al otro de manera secuencial sobre el muro, recomponiendo el patrón de estratificación original de la piedra, el cual se ve interrumpido por una incrustación de resina translucida en cada una. La segunda, son dos losas de travertino cortadas a la vena que rotan en uno de sus vértices para incorporarse la una con la otra ubicadas sobre el piso. El área donde se superponen es remplazada por un vidrio del mismo espesor de manera que las capas estratigráficas queden a modo de espejo.

En su conjunto, la instalación hace referencia a dialécticas de linealidad, ruptura y yuxtaposición, de superficie plana y volumen, de adentro y afuera; señalando la potencialidad de los materiales para retener y desplegar información o dejar que ésta se filtre a través de los huecos en las superficies segmentadas. Damiani integra a la instalación resina y vidrio en las fracturas del travertino, destacando la notoria intrusión de elementos ajenos entre los sedimentos naturales, generando así pequeños vanos o paréntesis que exponen una serie de quiebres en la continuidad de la composición morfológica de la piedra. La artista expande las posibilidades del collage como un medio para la escultura y la instalación, presentando una tensión dialéctica entre el todo y sus partes, donde la composición de las obras dispuestas en el espacio señalan la naturaleza fragmentaria, propia del collage, a través de los segmentos y las capas que se acoplan presentándose como un nuevo todo.

• Happenings

Artists: Pablo Accinelli, Edgardo Aragón, Juan Araujo, Felipe Arturo, Nicolás Bacal, Milena Bonilla, Paloma Bosquê, Pia Camil, Bevenuto Chavajay, Marcelo Cidade, Donna Conlon & Jonathan Harker, Nicolás Consuegra, Minerva Cuevas, Elena Damiani, Mariana Castillo Deball, Ximena Garrido-Lecca, Federico Herrero, Voluspa Jarpa, Runo Lagomarsino, Adriana Lara, Engel Leonardo, Valentina Liernur, Mateo López, Renata Lucas, Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, Nicolás Paris, Amalia Pica, Pablo Rasgado, Pedro Reyes, Adrián Villar Rojas, Gabriel Sierra, Clarissa Tossin, Carla Zaccagnini.

United States of Latin America
Curated by Jens Hoffmann and Pablo León de la Barra
September 18, 2015 – January 3, 2016
Museum of Contemporary Art
Detroit, MI, USA

The exhibition United States of Latin America brings together more than thirty emerging artists from Latin America, many of whom will be exhibiting in the United States for the first time.

The show is based on an ongoing conversation between two curators, Jens Hoffmann and Pablo León de la Barra, who for a number of years have exchanged research and information about artists, artworks, and the overall development of the art world from Mexico to Argentina and the many countries in between. The exhibition is an extension of this dialogue into the galleries of the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit via artworks suggested in dialogue format.

United States of Latin America features a wide range of works in a variety of mediums, for instance a series of photographs about housing in Havana, a film about the effects of gang violence in Mexico, sculptures reflecting on the involvement of the CIA in Latin American dictatorships, drawings of historical monuments from the future, a floor map about the selling of Brazilian rubber to the United States, boulders from a Colombian river that have been turned into flip-flops, and paintings about the interplay of modernist houses, tropical vegetation, and utopian architecture. The individual artworks touch upon themes such as geography, history, urbanism, memory, colonialism, architecture, war, modernism, social inequality, regionalism, and power. Given how Latin America’s realities oscillate between the colonial and the contemporary, between severe economic hardships and enormous financial expansions, between flourishing democracies and suppressive dictatorships, and between great progress and immense regression, the exhibition presents an intentionally fragmented survey, a deliberately disjointed overview, of the region and the art being made there. It allows the viewer a glimpse into a reality that may seem geographically near, but is in many ways far away and unfamiliar.

The curators invited a number of writers and curators from throughout Latin America to contribute to a glossary of terms that articulate the region’s historical landscape and conceptual syntax. This glossary will be published in the exhibition catalogue along with a conversation between the curators, texts on all of the artists, images of the exhibited artworks, and a roundtable discussion featuring a number of curators based in Latin America.

Developed in collaboration with Kadist Art Foundation, United States of Latin America is curated by Jens Hoffmann, MOCAD senior curator at large, and Pablo León de la Barra, guest curator. A range of public programs and educational activities will run concurrently with the exhibition, including a public conversation with the curators, lectures by some of the participating artists, film screenings, and performances.

• Happenings

Artists: Jumana Emil Abboud, Adel Abdessemed, Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc, Abounaddara, Boris Achour, Terry Adkins, Saâdane Afif, Chantal Akerman, John Akomfrah, Karo Akpokiere, Meriç Algün Ringborg, Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla, Kutluğ Ataman, Maja Bajevic, Ernesto Ballesteros, Sammy Baloji, Rosa Barba, Georg Baselitz, Eduardo Basualdo, Petra Bauer, Walead Beshty, Huma Bhabha, Christian Boltanski, Monica Bonvicini, Sonia Boyce, Daniel Boyd, Ricardo Brey, Marcel Broodthaers, Tania Bruguera, Teresa Burga, Keith Calhoun & Chandra McCormick, Cao Fei, Nidhal Chamekh, Olga Chernysheva, Tiffany Chung, Cooperativa Cráter Invertido, Creative Time Summit, Elena Damiani, Jeremy Deller, Thea Djordajdze, Marlène Dumas, e-flux Journal, Melvin Edwards, Inji Efflatoun, Antje Ehmann & Harun Farocki, Maria Eichhorn, Walker Evans, Harun Farocki, Emily Floyd, Peter Friedl, Coco Fusco, Marco Fusinato, Charles Gaines, Ellen Gallagher, Ana Gallardo, Dora García, Theaster Gates, Isa Genzken, Gluklya, Sônia Gomes, Katharina Grosse, Gulf Labor, Rupali Gupte & Prasad Shetty, Andreas Gursky, Hans Haacke, Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, Newell Harry, Kay Hassan, Thomas Hirschhorn, Carsten Höller, Nancy Holt & Robert Smithson, IM Heung Soon, Invisible Borders: Trans-African Photographers, Tetsuya Ishida, Ji Dachun, Isaac Julien, Hiwa K., Samson Kambalu, Ayoung Kim, Alexander Kluge, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Runo Lagomarsino, Sonia Leber & David Chesworth, Glenn Ligon, Gonçalo Mabunda, Madhusudhanan, Ibrahim Mahama, David Maljkovic, Victor Man, Abu Bakarr Mansaray, Chris Marker, Kerry James Marshall, Helen Marten, Fabio Mauri, Steve McQueen, Naeem Mohaiemen, Jason Moran, Ivana Müller, Lavar Munroe, Oscar Murillo, Wangechi Mutu, Hwayeon Nam, Bruce Nauman, Cheikh Ndiaye, Olaf Nicolai, Chris Ofili, Emeka Ogboh, Philippe Parreno, Pino Pascali, Adrian Piper, Lemi Ponifasio, Qiu Zhijie, Raha Raissnia, Raqs Media Collective, Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Mykola Ridnyi, Liisa Roberts, Mika Rottenberg, Joachim Schönfeldt, Massinissa Selmani, Fatou Kandé Senghor, Gedi Sibony, Gary Simmons, Taryn Simon, Lorna Simpson, Robert Smithson, Mounira Al Solh, Mikhael Subotzky, Mariam Suhail, Sarah Sze , The Propeller Group, The Tomorrow, Rirkrit Tiravanija , Barthélémy Toguo, Xu Bing , Ala Younis

56 International Art Exhibition, Venice Biennale, All the World’s Futures
Curated by Okwui Enwezor
May 9 – November 22, 2015
Giardini and Arsenale -La Biennale
Venice, Italy

Rather than one overarching theme that gathers and encapsulates diverse forms and practices into one unified field of vision, All the World’s Futures is informed by a layer of intersecting Filters. These Filters are a constellation of parameters that circumscribe multiple ideas, which will be touched upon to both imagine and realize a diversity of practices. In 2015, the 56th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia will employ the historical trajectory of the Biennale itself, over the course of its one hundred and twenty years existence, as a Filter through which to reflect on both the current “state of things” and the “appearance of things”. All the World’s Futures will take the present “state of things” as the ground for its dense, restless, and exploratory project that will be located in a dialectical field of references and artistic disciplines.

• Happenings

Artists: Adolfo Bernal, Alex Cerveny, Alexander Apostol, Anna Bella Geiger, Armando Miguelez, Bouchra Khalili, Camille Henrot, Carolina Caycedo, Christy Gast, Dora Mejia, Elena Damiani, Jose Castrellon, Leyla Cardenas, Libia Posada, Luis Hernandez Mellizo, Manuela Ribadeneira, Margarita Pineda, Milena Bonilla, Monica Paez, Nicolas Consuegra, Oscar Farfan, Paola Monzillo, Sebastian Fierro, Tania Bruguera, Tulio Restrepo.

En y Entre Geografías / In and In Between Geographie
Curated by Emiliano Valdés
September 2 – November 9, 2015
MAMM Museo de Arte Moderno
Medellín, Colombia

After almost four decades of existence, the Medellín Museum of Modern Art begins a new phase with the opening of its Expansion in September. For the opening, the Museum will present En y entre Geografías (In and In Between Geographies) among eight other exhibitions. In and In Between Geographies brings together a group of international artists who incorporate in their practices research and physical, cultural and political thinking aspects that determine the location of human beings and how such aspects affect life conditions, including subjective parameters like desire and intellectual production. The exhibition is structured in three sections that address mobility in the early 21st century through a variety of research approaches: formal, political, and metaphorical.

• Happenings

Artists: Pablo Accinelli, Doug Ashford, Claire Barclay, Rana Begum, Elena Damiani, Shezad Dawood, Annika Eriksson, Matias Faldbakken, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Ane Hjort Guttu, Tom Holert, Philippe Parreno, Amalia Pica, Bik Van der Pol, Yelena Popova, Walid Raad, Haegue Yang.

Future Light: Escaping Transparency
Curated by Maria Lind
June 11 – October 4, 2015
MAK Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna
Vienna Biennale 2015 – Ideas for Change
Vienna, Austria

How come some features of the old Enlightenment have crept back and are now being revisited in art, activism, and theory? Why now, after just about a century problematizing, questioning and opposing its legacy? Perhaps it is an ever more economized, fragmented, privatized, and surveilled existence where, for instance, taxpayers are forced to compensate for the crimes of financial speculation and the gap between the rich and the poor is rapidly increasing. It now becomes enticing to return to some fundamental notions and phenomena inherited from the struggle for universal emancipation: the light of reason and rationality, the individual subject, and the public sphere. They point to a wish to explore vision from its very basics—as if to try to see anew, to radical transformations of desire and to challenges to ownership and property relations as we know them. And to do so while not losing sight of the future, in the midst of parallax views, in light of the hyper-contradictions of our time. A future beyond pre-emptive and algorithmic forecasting. Art has after all this capacity to function as part seismograph and part sniffer dog, detecting things not yet seen, gelled and shaped in other parts of society, creating new imaginaries. Whether utopian or dystopian, or an unclear mix of the two.

These basic notions in radically mutated forms seem to indicate a future affected by an emerging movement toward a new enlightenment, conscious of the violent heritage of the old one in whose name atrocities have been committed over the centuries. It is post-enlightenment, not as in “radical rupture” but as in “working through” some of its characteristics. This time it is acknowledging the tensions and contradictions of the enlightenment baggage, trying not to give up on the future while being embedded in the current condition of “retrotopia” where the past in general and “memorialism” in particular loom large. Thus, three strands of thought and action have crystallized within the framework ofFuture Light: non-penetrating light, the individual subject as reworked by the politics of queer-feminism and its polymorph desires, and the public spherereconceived through and as commons and commoning. Each strand is taking shape in a different institutional and spatial setting, accompanied by a reader entitled Future Light and the mini-symposium Politics of Shine, and partly prepared in a closed workshop in October 2013 as well as in a series of public MAK Nite Labs at the MAK.

Within contemporary art, instead of the penetrating light that gives clarity and transparency, there is the reflected and refracted light that creates opacity, abstraction, and shadows. It is the light that goes on and off, that does not serve as a searchlight and yet is able to nurture new beginnings. Besides conditioning human visual perception, its new forms—for example the low-power LED light—are having other literal effects on the look and taste of plants as well as the physical and medical conditions of humans and animals. Furthermore, the future remains a point of orientation in many of the artworks. All this is being played out in the group exhibition at the MAK. Existing paintings, videos, sculptures, and drawings by seventeen artists is making up an installation without walls but with plenty of natural light.

Theory and practice in the name of LGBT and queerness have for some time reshaped notions of the individual, subjectivity, and desire. If traditional notions of gender rely on heteronormative patriarchal formations of desire, then this linchpin is now being challenged in ways hitherto unseen, affected by synthetic extensions of identity such as hormonal drugs. Under the rubric of LOVING, REPEATING, Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz are presenting three film-based works at Kunsthalle Wien. The installations convey filmed performances where the tensions between the individual and the collective carry a high degree of theatricality. While curtains and fumes create opacity, glitter and wigs indicate glamour. The characters who feature in these dramas are consciously multi-sided, defying normality, including the law and economy. Neither being entirely historical nor present, they project ahead in a truly anachronistic manner, to new and unrealized forms of enjoyment. Today many artistic and other projects revive the notions of “commons” and “commoning” in response to failures of capitalism and the increasing withdrawal of the welfare state. How will the Vienna Biennale of 2049 resurrect the voices of the citizens’ initiatives that have appeared during the past 130 years? With The Report, STEALTH.unlimited and Stefan Gruber together with Paul Currion shed light on how the achievements of these initiatives have been essential to the development of the city, yet have often been obscured by the political requirements of Vienna’s urban ambitions. Straddling the line between fiction and non-fiction, The Report will ask what it means to be a citizen of the smartest of all smart cities. It will be released as a limited printed edition in September 2049.

In a new film Marysia Lewandowska is exploring the commons as experienced through the kindergarten as an early testing ground for sharing, belonging, privacy and withdrawal. The project was triggered by the work and life of the Viennese architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky (1897–2000), in which many of the contradictions of the 20th century are played out, and involves the voice of Di Zhang, a young architect in Beijing for whom “the communism of commerce” is a lodestar. Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri are arranging an “unworkshop” around the politics of food and food production, which have been central concerns for the artists in their work on commons and commoning. The design, research and art studio Metahaven, who have developed the notion of “black transparency”, have co-conceptualized and designed the e-reader Future Light and the handout which connects the various parts of the overall project Future Light.

• Happenings

My conceptual interests –understanding the present by looking into the past and recognizing the potential of images to resonate and prompt a universe of associations in the collective memory– guide my practice of transforming found material into collages, sculptures, and video installations. In my investigation I turn to scientific studies such as geology, archeology, and cartography to explore forms of fragmentation and material reinterpretation. My work seeks to redefine natural realms and their generative processes, presenting them as incomplete and ambiguous spaces where multiple times and topographies seem to unfold in unison.

Mi práctica es guiada por intereses críticos relacionados al entendimiento del presente a través de una mirada al pasado y a la capacidad evocativa de las imágenes para resonar y desencadenar un universo de asociaciones en la memoria colectiva; estos intereses transforman materiales encontrados en collages, esculturas y video instalaciones. En mi investigación recurro a temas como la geología, arqueología y cartografía para explorar formas de fragmentación y reinterpretación de material documentado y racionalizado por la ciencia que estudia la composición, evolución e historia de la Tierra. Mi obra busca reinterpretar estadíos naturales y sus procesos generativos presentándolos como espacios incompletos y ambiguos en donde se fusionan múltiples tiempos y topografías.

Selected Biographical Information

Education / Training

• 2008-2010: MA Fine Arts, Goldsmiths College, London, United Kingdom.
• 2000-2005: BA Fine Arts, Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes Corriente Alterna, Lima, Peru.

Prizes / Fellowships

• 2014: Americas Society’s Commission for David Rockefeller Atrium, Americas Society, New York, USA.
• 2006: Special Mention , 12th International Arts and Digital Cultures Festival of Gran Canaria, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain.
• 2006: Second Prize, 9th French-Peruvian Contest of Visual Arts “Pasaporte para un Artista”, Lima, Peru.
• 2004: Production Prize, 2nd Peruvian Contest of Video and Electronic Arts, Lima, Peru.

Solo Exhibitions

• 2013: “All The Pieces Back Together”, Selma Feriani Gallery, London, United Kingdom.
• 2013: “La Chambre“, Elaine Levy Project, Brussels, Belgium.
• 2012: “History Decomposes Into Images, Not Into Narratives”, Revolver Galeria, Lima, Peru.
• 2011: “Elena Damiani and Alois Godinat“, Elaine Levy Project, Brussels, Belgium.
• 2011: “The Second Treasury of Stanleth”, Selma Feriani Gallery, London, United Kingdom.
• 2011: “Vanishing Point Vantage Point”, Dohyang Lee Galerie, Paris, France.
• 2007: “Sites”, Galeria Vertice, Lima, Peru.
• 2005: “1st International Print Biennale – Prints and Motion “, Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes Corriente Alterna, Lima, Peru.
• 2005: “Geo”, Sala Luis Miro Quesada Garland, Lima, Peru.
• 2003: “Moción animal”, Espacio La Culpable, Lima, Peru.

Group Exhibitions

• 2015: “THEOREM, You Simply Destroy the Image I Always Had of Myself“, Mana Contemporary, New Jersey, USA.
• 2015: “Vienna Biennale – Future Light: Escaping Transparency“, MAK Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna, Austria.
• 2015: “All the World’s Futures“, 56 Venice Biennale International Art Exhibition, Venice, Italy.
• 2014: “Idea of Fracture – Opinione Latina P.2“, Francesca Minini, Milan, Italy.
• 2014: “Spatial Acts: Americas Society Commissions Art“, Americas Society, New York, USA.
• 2014: “BIM Bienal de la Imagen y Movimiento“, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2013: “Project 35 Volume 2“, ICI Independent Curators International, touring exhibition.
• 2013: “Videoarte 01- Reopening the blackbox of technology“, MAC Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Lima, Peru.
• 2013: “9th Bienal do Mercosul“, Porto Alegre, Brazil.
• 2013: “Ciclorama“, Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City, Mexico.

Collections

• Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City, Mexico.
• Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco, USA.
• Kamel Lazaar Foundation, Geneva, Switzerland.
• Coleccion Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, Caracas / New York, Venezuela / USA.

• Artists