New programming
Fray Zacarias Martinez, 2
01001 Vitoria-Gasteiz (SPAIN)
info [at] montehermoso.net
www.montehermoso.net
FLOOR 1. WORKS FROM THE PARKETT COLECCTION
FLOOR -1. MIENTRAS HAY VIDA…
FLOOR -2. ¿TIERRA DE NADIE?, INSTANTANÉITÉ
February 11– May 22, 2011
¿TIERRA DE NADIE?
Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc / Maria Thereza Alves / Vasco Araújo / José Arnaud-Bello / Amy Balkin / Abraham Cruzvillegas / Jimmie Durham / Andrea Geyer (with Simon J. Ortiz) / Ana María Millán / Olivia Plender.
“¿Tierra de nadie?” (No Man’s Land?) is an exhibition that explores complex processes of land appropriation and different forms of popular resistance which incorporate a fundamental criticism of the logic of private property as the foundation of an economic and political system—liberal capitalism—and of a logic of fragmented social relationships. From the enclosure of the commons in the Middle Ages in England to colonial usurpation and the most recent strategies of appropriation of vast territories, the tenure and use of the land have been unequally negotiated between accumulation and the struggle of smallholders, between privatization and communal use.
These opposing processes of colonial and capitalist appropriation on the one hand, and of popular demands on the other, do not constitute a simple opposition. By using different media, the lines of research of the artists included in “¿Tierra de nadie?” reach different dimensions to those of academic research. Rather than presenting conclusions, the works shown here are capable of showing ramifications, complexities and paradoxes; to ask questions, and above all, to reveal specific histories. Far from offering an exhaustive geographical and historical analysis of the subject, “¿Tierra de nadie?” seeks to create a platform for reflection-that arouses from artistic practice-from which to point at an aspect of economic history which has always been subject to dispute, even now that the virtual dynamics of the global financial system seem to overshadow the crucial issue of the ownership and use of land.
The works in the exhibition explore specific cases and articulate varied relationships between them through the different times and places examined. From the privatisation of the commons and the proletarisation of the peasantry (Olivia Plender) to current strategies to establish legal frameworks for common tenure (Amy Balkin), the issue of the land is examined from the point of view of colonisation and the liberation struggles in different contexts (Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc, Maria Thereza Alves, Andrea Geyer, Ana María Millán), the current uses of the land and the discourses that legitimise them (Jimmie Durham), the popular movements of resistance and occupation (Abraham Cruzvillegas) and the ways of life, which are almost impossible today, in which the land is travelled rather than inhabited (José Arnaud-Bello, Vasco Araújo).
To complement and expand the issues approached in the exhibition, a documentation area has been organised, where some cases may be explored in greater depth. Additionally, a two-day course has been scheduled, and will include the contributions of artists, historians and filmmakers, all of whom have delved into these issues in their respective disciplines.
Curated by Catalina Lozano.
January 11–May 22, 2011
WORKS FROM PARKETT COLLECTION
The Parkett magazine was founded in Zurich in 1984 by a group of friends, with the idea of generating an open exchange between artists and writers on art in Europe and the United States. With this in mind, Parkett opened offices in Zurich and New York and articles have always been published in both German and English. From the start the magazine did not restrict its activity to writing about artists but entered into close collaboration with them. Not only is the work of leading international artists analysed in essays by writers and critics, but artists are also invited to participate in editorial work by choosing writers as well as collaborating in cover and spine designs for each individual edition. Each artist also creates a work of art, specially produced for Parkett in limited edition, signed and numbered, offered for purchase to the magazine’s subscribers. These works have covered a wide range of media including magazine inserts, painting, photography, drawing, sculpture, video, DVDs and sound.
In 2009, the University of Castilla- La Mancha received the donation—from Helga de Alvear—of all numbers of the journal and its artists’ editions published since 1984. In order to ensure its conservation and future dissemination, the Parkett collection has been given a permanent home at the Fine Arts Faculty, Cuenca.
February 25–July 3, 2011
PASSWORDS 11. SPACES OF THE SELF. Femininity in Italian Video
Elisabetta Benassi / Dafne Boggeri / Ketty la Rocca / Marzia Migliora / Ottonella Mocellin / Liliana Moro / Moira Ricci / Marcella Vanzo
The writings of Carla Lonzi and the collective Rivolta Femminile, point to the fact that the inaugural moment of Italian feminism is profoundly tied to the world of art. However, this bond is marked by an irremediable detachment, for at the time art was still considered a male terrain. Italian feminism can in a certain sense be seen to build on the radical refusal of the forms of creativity of that time, in particular the myth that art is an emancipatory practice. Rivolta Femminile considered the possibilities that art could serve as a liberatory force for women to be illusory, since creativity had been in fact colonized by men. Despite this rejection, however, we get a sense of the previous involvements and commitments to the artistic arena in the feminist writings of Lonzi as well as the manifestos of the collective. These artistic antecedents are evidenced by their choice of provocative language; the form of their manifestos, and the various forms of self-representation that clearly follow rhetorical and discursive strategies borrowed from the avant-garde. However they are also made manifest by their reference to the problem of the artistic gaze. Contrary to the then contemporary theorizations in the Anglo-Saxon context, for Rivolta Feminile the woman is not the object but the spectator of the artwork; it is she who passively observes and thus legitimizes male creativity through her muted gaze. These considerations suggest the frustration Lonzi must have had when her own work as an art critic came up against her search for a critical vocabulary that could break with gender hierarchies. If, for Lonzi, the absence of woman legitimated the patriarchal character of creativity, this did not translate into a push to subvert its foundations, imposing on men the very kind of competition from which women were excluded. The birth of Rivolta Femminile signals instead a paradoxical bifurcation between feminism and artistic practice.
The eight videos collected in this exhibition are were for the most part made after these events, and by artists born between the sixties and seventies; artists who belong to a generation that faces artworld of the nineties and beyond, when the work of many of these artists finally succeeded in gaining the attention of the public and of art critics. The nineties have often been represented as a “turning point.” As re-discoveries of important figures like Carol Rama show, the nineties mark a seemingly sudden shift from the hypertrophic male chauvinism of the Transavanguardia to the affirmation of a diffuse female creativity. How do we interpret this shift or break? As a phenomenon of normalization, as a return of the repressed (in the Freudian sense), as rupture, or historical regression? Is there a thread that links the radicality and creativity of Italian feminism of the 1970s with the more recent blossoming of women’s artistic practices? (If so, what is that thread?) It is difficult to answer these questions. It appears evident, however, that the time or temporality of the art of women raises questions about its own non-linearity, about its discrepancies, anachronisms, as well as the returns that it is comprised of. […]
Curated by Giovanna Zapperi
February 11–April 10, 2011
NEXT:PRESENTACIONES/AURKEZPENAK
Irantzu Lekue
Amaia Gracia + Inés Bermejo
NEXT is a bimonthly cycle of exhibitions in collaboration between Montehermoso and the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of the Basque Country. This programme tries to make visible the projects by artists undergoing a process of “professionalisation”. Iranztu Lekue (Vitoria-Gasteiz, 1987) and Amaia Gracia + Inés Bermejo (Pamplona, 1985; Getxo, 1986), were selected at the last open call process.