WITNESSES / TESTIGOS
Adel Abdessemed, Maja Bajevic, Jeppe Hein, Cristina Lucas, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Aleksandra Mir, Jesús Palomino, Gregor Schneider, Shen Yuan
OPENING: June 24th, 2006
Curator: Jimena Blázquez Abascal
NMAC Foundation
(Montenmedio Arte Contemporáneo)
Ctra N-340 km. 42,5 / Vejer de la Frontera / 11150 Cadiz Spain
T: 34 956 45 51 34<br>
F: 34 956 45 51 35
nmac@fundacionnmac.com
www.fundacionnmac.com
Local versus Global
The dual global/local movement, called glocalisation designates the fact that what happens globally is inseparable from the local as well as the fact that a local situation has direct global implication. This implies that the economy, information, and culture are being globalised, in parallel, causing therefore an inverse movement of localisation and a vindication of local identities. In other words, the village is being globalised whilst the globe is being villagised, we could say, paraphrasing Marshall McLuhan.
Glocalisation Frontiers are glocalisation spaces, which are neither in one defined territory (locality) nor another (globality); they represent neither identities nor otherness, but crossroads, transit, ipse-identities more than idem-identities; that is, mixtures of identities and othernesses, Chicanos and Tarifeños, those who do not speak a pure language, but rather, the richness of border impurities. It is well known that ports are amongst the first venues for communication, the first spaces where global interchanges took place, both economic and those involving information and symbols. Moreover, they were amongst those that first made known their history and geography, in local images that travellers brought with them when they went home.
It is in this context that the artists of the show have work as witnesses producing site-specific projects taking in consideration the borders between Europe and Africa. The NMAC Foundation, located at the southernmost tip of the Iberian Peninsula, in the province of Cadiz, is the point of departure for the projects of artists acting as a platform for establishing a dialogue between the eastern and the western world.
This is how Adel Abdessemed, with his project Salam Europe, shows a terrible aspect of immigration, that of the border crossings, the lack of freedom, with a piece made out of rolls of barbed wire. Maja Bajevic, in her piece Sculpture for the Blind, deals with the same theme of local immigration with global implications, the scars left by a journey with no return, a journey into the unknown, in which the only elements of survival are the need, and the dream, to achieve a better life. Physical experience as a way to reactivate memory and rouse the consciousness is what Jeppe Hein evokes in the project Modified Social Benches. Cristina Lucas video masks a severe criticism of social and gender inequality, which is still relevant in many corners of the world where women do not have the right to express their ideas nor to exercise a freely chosen profession. Guided by the idea that generosity can build the world and that opposites should seek out the other side of themselves so that discourses can be more than empty words, Pascale Marthine Tayou built Plansone Duty free, a futurist architecture filled with objects from Cameroon, and other cast-offs from everyday life found in the province of Cadiz. With Love Stories, Aleksandra Mir reopens a social process, converting her work into an exercise of humanist socialisation, in which we all participate as witnesses and as protagonists. Part of the local multiculturalism of the Andalusian territory is due to the relationship between Spanish Andalusia and Moroccan Andalusia. Jesús Palomino, with the projects Antifreeze & 8 Radio Broadcast works with the complicity of these two neighbouring regions, with their contrasts, their similarities, and their ties. Gregor Schneiders project Cube Cadiz, its a white cube, the negative version of the Kaaba in Mecca. With this project Gregor Schneider gives new life to the Venice cube project, creating a structure similar in dimensions to the Kaaba, but this time it is white, the colour of tolerance, of peace, and of dialogue, prevailing in the face of a world situation where dialogue, respect, and understanding are lacking. The delicate piece by Shen Yuan, Puente/Bridge, is a visual metaphor, witnessing a crossroads between cultures, a reference to multiculturalism reflecting the difficulties involved in differences between traditions and beliefs, which impede full understanding between people.
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