430 cm
Taking archaeology as her departure point to examine the trajectories of replicated and displaced objects, “Who will measure the space, who will tell me the time?” was produced in Oaxaca for her exhibition of the same title at the Contemporary Museum of Oaxaca (MACO) in 2015. The sculpture, employing the technique of traditional Atzompa pottery originating from Oaxaca, Mexico, is an examination of the way in which archaeological heritage is remembered in the earthenware made by Atzompa potters today. Accompanied by the publication ‘Ixiptla Vol. 3’, the edition examines imposed meaning on replications in the form of the plaster molds, photographs, drawings, scale models and facsimiles made by archaeologists in the effort for conserving lost objects. The artist’s selection of shapes and forms reference her research in the permanent collection held at Rufino Tamayo Museum and is the basis for imagining a series of stories relating to Atzompa history. In that sense, the columns contain fictitious or historical figures, weaving together an intricate network in which they coincide in space and converse in time (snake, pochote and ceiba – a subtropical tree, warriors, mother earth or pottery are just a few examples). “Who will measure the space, who will tell me the time?” is a sculptural exquisite corpse, a form of an infinite column that offers a temporal space for interpretation and reflection.
The practice of Mariana Castillo Deball (b. Mexico City, 1975) is centered on intensive research. In weaving together perceived facts and legends, the artist deconstructs how we understand tradition, liberating content from imposed ideological legacies. Mariana Castillo Deball’s collaborative research—in particular in the domain of science, geology, archaeology and literature—is manifested and synthesized into her multimodal sculptural practice. The archive is a significant aspect of the artist’s practice, whereby the research conducted in the creation of her sculptures is culminated, catalogued and preserved. Deball is not only interested in traces of the past, her multidisciplinary approach allows her to study the different ways in which a historical object can be read today.
Mariana Castillo Deball’s set of kill hole plates are part of a larger body of work problematizing archeological narratives, and drawing attention to the conservation process and its role in recreating an imagined object...
The threshold in contemporary Pakistan between the security of private life and the increasingly violent and unpredictable public sphere is represented in Abidi’s 2009 series Karachi ...
The perceived effortlessness of power, projecting above experiences of labored subordination is examined in Death at a 30 Degree Angle by Bani Abidi, which funnels this projection of image through the studio of Ram Sutar, renowned in India for his monumental statues of political figures, generally from the post-independence generation...
In Up All Night, Waiting for the Chelsea Hotel Magic to Spark My Creativity Mario García Torres constructs and documents a hypothetical scene, situating himself within a lineage of artists and creatives that used to congregate at the historic hotel...
Canned Laughter was Okón’s response to an invitation from Ciudad Juárez , Mexico, where artists were asked to create works based on their experience of the city...
For Sentimentite Agnieszka Kurant collaborated with Justin Lane, CEO and Co-Founder of CulturePulse, to gather global sentiment data that has been harvested from millions of Twitter and Reddit posts related to 100 seismic events in recent history...
The artist writes about her work Borrando la Frontera, a performance done at Tijuana/San Diego border: “I visually erased the train rails that serve as a divider between the US and Mexico...
Gabriel Kuri has created a series of works in which he juxtaposes perennial and ephemeral materials...
Invited in 2007 to the Museum Folkwang in Essen (Germany), Simon Starling questioned its history: known for its collections and particularly for its early engagement in favor of modern art (including the acquisition and exhibition of works by Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Matisse), then destroyed during the Second World War, the museum was pillaged for its masterpieces of ‘degenerate art’ by the nazis...
In line with Hernández’s interest in catastrophe, Vulnerabilia (choques) is a collection of images of shipwrecks and Vulnerabilia (naufragios) collects scenes of car crashes...
The types of objects Feldmann is interested in collecting into serial photographic grids or artist’s books are often also found in three dimensional installations...
For Sentimentite Agnieszka Kurant collaborated with Justin Lane, CEO and Co-Founder of CulturePulse, to gather global sentiment data that has been harvested from millions of Twitter and Reddit posts related to 100 seismic events in recent history...
The types of objects Feldmann is interested in collecting into serial photographic grids or artist’s books are often also found in three dimensional installations...
Untitled (City Limits) is a series of five black-and-white photographs of road signs, specifically the signs demarcating city limits of several small towns in California...
During her research on primitive currencies and cultural cannibalism, Cuevas came across the Donald Duck comic book issue “The Stone Money Mystery,” where Donald goes on a quest to find missing museum objects...
Vallance’s Rocket is a vibrant picture in which masses of color and collage coalesce into a central vehicle, yet the whole surface seems lit with the roar of space travel...
Mario Garcia Torres discovered the work of artist Oscar Neuestern in an article published in ARTnews in 1969...
Mario Garcia Torres films a game of Charades among professional actors guessing the former North Korean dictator’s favorite Hollywood films...
In his posters, prints, and installations, Erick Beltrán employs the language and tools of graphic design, linguistics, typography, and variations in alphabetical forms across cultures; he is specifically interested in how language and meaning form structures that can be misconstrued as universal...