Dimensions vary
Calle’s drawings all inhabit received forms but alter them to call attention to specific qualities. A newspaper is both reproduced and modified to call attention to the newspaper as a means of information transmission. This also emphasizes the effect of various seemingly unimportant support mechanisms: the role of visual layout and images. In other drawings Calle explores systems: the unfurling of suburban streets, resembling text and the veins on a leaf. These congruences point to the unity of Calle’s thematic interests: the circulation of information, human energies, and lives.
Johanna Calle’s drawings use pre-existing systems to explore issues of built space, cultural identity, and language. Her work often departs from common lines of handwriting, altering them with energy and pattern. The practice of drawing is considered expansively in Calle’s work, as she inserts stitching, metal, and even, returning to her background as a painter, the covering capacity of paint.
Primero estaba el mar ( First Was the Sea , 2012) is a system of equivalences between syllables and silhouettes of waveforms cast in cement...
Defined as entropy, the second law of thermodynamics proposes that energy is more easily dispersed than it is concentrated...
Los rastreadores is a two-channel video by Claudia Joskowicz narrating the story of a fictitious drug lord, Ernesto Suarez, whose character is based on the well-known Bolivian drug dealer, Roberto Suárez...
Johanna Calle’s Abece “K” (2011) is part of a series of drawings (compiled into an artist book called Abece ) based on the alphabet...
Primero estaba el mar ( First Was the Sea , 2012) is a system of equivalences between syllables and silhouettes of waveforms cast in cement...
Defined as entropy, the second law of thermodynamics proposes that energy is more easily dispersed than it is concentrated...
Vietnam's visual arts and COVID-19 | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia ArtsEquator Viewpoints Nguyen Duc Phuong July 30, 2020 By Quyen Hoang (2,100 words, 8-minute read) On a rainy evening towards the end of May 2020, it seemed like Saigon’s most dapper guys and modish gals all flocked to Galerie Quynh...
Podcast 60: The Media Landscape in the Philippines | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia ArtsEquator Viewpoints Courtesy of Asian Arts Media Roundtable July 4, 2019 Duration: 19 min In our latest podcast, art critic Pristine de Leon gives a comprehensive overview of the media landscape in the Philippines, discussing challenges to the practice and the new platforms that are paving the way for creative, incisive and timely forms of arts criticism...
Johanna Calle’s Abece “K” (2011) is part of a series of drawings (compiled into an artist book called Abece ) based on the alphabet...
Bowers’ Radical Hospitality (2015) is a sculptural contradiction: its red and blue neon letters proclaim the words of the title, signaling openness and generosity, while the barbed wires that encircle the words give another message entirely...
Wright Imperial Hotel (2004) is a sort of bow and arrow made out of feathers, a São Paulo phone book, and other materials...
The small drawings that comprise Study from May Day March, Los Angeles 2010 (Immigration Reform Now) and We Are Immigrants Not Terrorists are based on photographs taken at a political rally in downtown Los Angeles in which thousands of individuals demonstrated for immigrants’ rights...
Sarcastically titled to call attention to the problematic notions underlying colonialism, this photograph shows hundreds of Native Malaysians seated quietly behind one of their colonial oppressors...
By Way of Revolution is a series of works by Helina Metaferia that addresses the inherited histories of protest that inform contemporary social movements...