Débora Delmar Corp.: Upward Mobility
Test Run: Performance in Public
28 March–17 May 2015
Press preview: Friday 27 March, 11am–1pm
Preview: Friday 27 March, 6:30pm
Modern Art Oxford
30 Pembroke Street
Oxford OX1 1BP
Débora Delmar Corp.: Upward Mobility
Modern Art Oxford will present a major new site-specific installation by Débora Delmar Corp.
Débora Delmar (b. 1986, Mexico City) adopted the name Débora Delmar Corp. for the distribution of her work in 2009; not to critique corporate reality, but to reflect on the state of 21st-century living. Working with sculpture, video, digital collage and installation, Débora Delmar Corp. adopts and reconfigures the production, branding and merchandising techniques of global corporations.
Débora Delmar Corp.’s work incorporates objects and imagery from mainstream media, including home décor advertisements, trending colours schemes and lifestyle magazines, to examine the ways in which commodity culture structures our everyday life and routines, perpetuating codified assumptions around class, economics and ethnicity.
Upward Mobility will include a group of ceiling-height banners emblazoned with aspirational imagery found on the social media page of a bank in Mexico.These will be fenced in by a series of kitchen countertops and garden hedges harbouring new sculptures made from found objects, which in the past have included product packaging and food wrappers, and here will be created by the artist during a month-long residency in Oxford, UK.
Upward Mobility has been generously supported by the Debora Delmar Corp. Exhibition Circle at Modern Art Oxford and the Government of Mexico as part of the Year of Mexico in UK 2015.
Test Run: Performance in Public
Modern Art Oxford presents Test Run: Performance in Public—a multidisciplinary project of ideas from our wider exhibition over the year, including live performances, talks, workshops and films.
This spring, Modern Art Oxford explores the idea of the “commons”—the physical, digital, conceptual and public spaces that we, as individuals and as part of wider society, relate to each day.
Test Run focuses on artists who use public space specifically for performance. From mid-summer festivals to political protests, the village green to the town square—the public arena has always been a site for artistic expression and radical action.
Through a selection of new and historical works, this edition of Test Run examines what happens when “normal behaviour” in public spaces is disrupted—a woman takes a man for a walk on a lead, a man forms the start of a queue for nothing—and how expectations of public behaviour can be exploited.
Using film and documentary material, discussions and interactive sessions, Test Run will explore the making, curating and presenting of performance in public space. Including live performance, talks, workshops and a series of three new commissions, Test Run links the interior space of the gallery to public locations in Oxford’s city centre.
