Online symposium on Feliza Bursztyn: Welding Madness 

Feliza Bursztyn: Welding Madness is the first museum retrospective of Colombian artist Feliza Bursztyn (b. Bogotá, 1933–d. Paris, 1982) to be presented outside of her home country. Bringing together approximately 50 sculptures, films and installations as well as archival material, most of which are shown for the first time in Europe, this ambitious, career-spanning survey positions Bursztyn as one of Latin America’s most important sculptors of the 20th century.

Feliza Bursztyn was a pioneering Colombian artist whose kinetic sculptures revolutionised the South American art alongside the work of her better-known contemporaries Gego and Mira Schendel. Bursztyn created her works using discarded fragments of machines, tires, cables and other metal bits adding—with time—hand-dyed fabrics, motors, light and sound to produce increasingly complex, room-sized installations. Eventually, she produced immersive, experiential spaces: her sculptures clung to walls, hung from ceilings or perched on stages and carried out choreographed dances set to music in dramatically lit and adorned rooms. Throughout her career, the artist combined and interrogated ideas about art, machines, craft, modernity and labour through the lens of hysteria—a term which since the 19th century has been used to describe female instability, abnormality and emotional excess. Bursztyn deployed the notion and tropes of madness to explore the irrationalities, fragilities and ambiguities of modern life.

The one-day symposium devoted to the work of Feliza Bursztyn, organised as part of the exhibition, and accompanying the launch of the first monographic book devoted to the artist and published with Skira Editore is an attempt to offer a much-needed history of this vibrant body of work.

Participants
Marta Dziewańska, curator at Kunstmuseum Bern
Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, art historian and curator of modern and contemporary art, with a focus on Latin American and Latinx art
Pierre-Henri Foulon, curator at Muzeum Susch
Camilo Leyva, artist, researcher and curator of a monographic show devoted to Feliza Bursztyn and presented at Museum of Modern Art in Bogotá in 2009
Agnieszka Sosnowska, assistant professor at the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Science, curator of the publishing and discursive programme at Muzeum Susch
Sylvia Suárez, curator and writer specialised in Colombian art
Gina McDaniel Tarver, associate professor of art history at Texas State University, with a focus on Latin America
Abigail Winograd, the MacArthur Fellows Program 40th Anniversary Exhibition Curator at the Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago
Lynn Zelevansky, art historian, former curator at the painting and sculpture department at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and former director of Carnegie Museum of Art

For more information about the book, see here.
The symposium will be held in English.
No reservation is required. Admission free.
For more information about the programme and webstream, please follow this link.

Programme
11am:

Greeting
Grażyna Kulczyk, founder of Muzeum Susch, Chairwoman of the Board of Art Stations Foundation CH

Introduction
Marta Dziewańska and Abigail Winograd, curators of Feliza Bursztyn: Welding Madness

Part I: An Outsider—Feliza Bursztyn and Her Context

Lecture: Abigail Winograd, “Feliza Bursztyn: Life in Images”

Panel discussion:  Marta Dziewańska, Camilo Leyva, Agnieszka Sosnowska, Sylvia Suárez, Abigail Winograd

Screenings:
Hoy Feliza, (Today Feliza), 1968. By Luis Ernesto Arocha, 16 mm film, black and white, 6 minutes.
Azilef, 1971. By Luis Ernesto Arocha, 16 mm film, black and white, 8 minutes.

Part II: A Pioneer—Feliza Bursztyn and Decentralised Feminism

Lecture: Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, “The Gendered Political Embodiment of Feliza Bursztyn’s Work”

Lecture: Gina McDaniel Tarver, “We Must Fight: Feliza Bursztyn and Colombian Women in the Arts”

Panel discussion: Marta Dziewańska, Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, Pierre-Henri Foulon, Abigail Winograd, Gina McDaniel Tarver, Lynn Zelevansky

Screening: Feliza Bursztyn: Welding Madness. Film about the exhibition and the artist.

Partners of the symposium and the publication: The Institute for Studies on Latin American Art, Skira Editore