Photography (Photography)

The half-length portrait of Joe Shirley presents a man with a great presence, wearing several items that point to ancestral Native American culture. In this photograph, which is relatively poor in information, the projection screen in the background acts as a clue about the event: Bruno Serralongue went to the second phase of the ‘Sommet Mondial sur la Société de l’Information’ (or SMSI, World Summit on Information Society, in Tunis in November 2005). This portrait echoes another picture in the same series (Native Peoples Claim Their Right to Participate in the Information Society) in which Joe Shirley is just a silhouette amongst the speakers, whereas here he occupies the entire frame.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

On Fire by Runo Lagomarsino comprises twenty pieces of parchment, each of which has had the contours and map of Brazil burned in stages. The work’s connection to Amazon deforestation is difficult to ignore. Yet still, it also engages in broader issues about the country’s fractures, such as the 2018 fire at Rio de Janeiro’s National Museum and the ongoing erasure of its past.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Yo también soy humo (I am also smoke) is a 16mm film that has been digitized to video. It features a single shot of a vintage postcard depicting the Columbus Monument and the port of Barcelona, both of which are linked to colonial histories and historical trajectories. The sea is an unnaturally bright blue.

Mr. Black, Mr. Navy, Mr. Stripes is a photographic series of opera gloves made of men’s tailored trousers that were presented in 2017 in “La Plage” in Paris, a shop window turned into an experimental art space. The personification of the objects named after characters intended to compose a fiction from the display. The project follows Zhu’s thinking on the definition of “queer”: how to express a state?

Painting (Painting)

En Guard Souvenir is composed of a group of eleven elements (ten paintings on paper and a sculpture) which deconstructs and recomposes the context of Tienanmen Square in Beijing. This square is known for numerous political events : the cultural revolution between 1966 and 1976, the arrest of the Gang of Four and protests in 1989 where thousands of demonstrators who were protesting against the corruption of the regime were killed. In this work, Bruno Pacheco alludes to the historical importance of this place, the choice of viewpoints reveals very precise but sporadic details there : part of the mausoleum devoted to Mao, a portrait of him and its frame, a view overlooking the Forbidden City, etc.