Eli Cortiñas: The Body is The House, The House is But Haunted / João Gabriel: Almost Blue

Kunstverein Braunschweig is pleased to announce its summer programme featuring two newly conceived solo exhibitions:

Eli Cortiñas: The Body is The House, The House is But Haunted
Kunstverein Braunschweig dedicates Eli Cortiñas’ extensive body of work the first institutional solo show in Germany.

The artist uses various heterogeneous sources to create her video and spatial installations. By appropriating, re-reading, and reassembling historical films, present-day TV shows, commercials, propaganda and educational films, or YouTube videos, Cortiñas brings together what only seems distant and reveals the production and consumption contexts inscribed in the images, as well as the patterns of perception within which they operate.

The exhibition brings together key works and presents installations created especially for the exhibition at Villa Salve Hospes.

João Gabriel: Almost Blue
Kunstverein Braunschweig presents the first institutional solo exhibition of João Gabriel in Germany. With new works, the artist explores queer desire, intimacy, cruising, mental and real landscapes. In his paintings, he processes experienced and longed-for impressions of beaches, of his surroundings in the Portuguese countryside and of pornographic films of the "queer underground" produced for an invisible audience in the 1970s and 1980s.

Guestroom
For each exhibition, the former guest room of Villa Salve Hospes accommodates a commentary on the main presentation. We are delighted that João Gabriel invites filmmakers João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata.

Curated by Nuno de Brito Rocha and Benedikt Johannes Seerieder.

Assistance: Merivan Kilic

Exhibition scenography for João Gabriel: Almost blue by Diane Hillebrand.

The exhibitions comprise a diverse public program:

July 9, 2022, 7pm–12am
Braunschweig Museum Night

July 13, 2022, 4pm
Workshop in cooperation with f3_kollektiv on the topics of the exhibition

July 14, August 4, 18 and 25, 2022, 6pm
Curator’s tours

July 28, 2022, 9pm
Film programme by Eli Cortiñas in cooperation with Sommerkino e.V.

August 10, 2022, 6pm
City tour on queer social spaces, history and stories in Braunschweig in cooperation with VSE e.V and Lorenz Weinberg (Freie Universität Berlin)

September 22, 2022, 6pm
Queer poetry reading with Kevin Junk, Samantha Bohatsch and Ozan Zakariya Keskinkılıç

Thursdays, 6pm and Sundays, 3pm
Public guided tour free of charge

Artists’ CVs
Eli Cortiñas was born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and lives and works in Berlin. From 2019 to 2022, she shared a professorship with Candice Breitz at HBK Braunschweig and has been appointed Professor of Media Art at HGB Leipzig. She studied at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne and at the European Film College in Ebeltoft. She has received numerous grants and residencies and has been represented in several group exhibitions and film festivals including 6th Ural Biennial Ekaterinburg (2021); Transmediale, Berlin (2021); Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (2020); Kunstmuseum Bonn (2019) and Riga Biennial (2018).

Numerous solo exhibitions have been dedicated to her work such as at Convent Contemporary Art Space, Ghent (2019), Contemporary Art Center Vilnius (2018) or at Centro de Arte Atlantico, Las Palmas (2015).

João Gabriel was born in 1992 in Leiria, Portugal and currently lives in Caldas da Rainha. He graduated from the College of Fine Arts and Design in Caldas da Rainha in 2016. He has been included in various exhibitions, including at The RYDER Madrid (2021); at Lehmann + Silva Gallery (2019); at the Galeria do Teatro da Politécnica, Lisbon (2019), or at the Coimbra Biennial (2019). Furthermore, the artist was a laureate of the EDP Foundation New Artists Award in 2017.

The exhibition The Body is The House, The House is But Haunted has been made possible by
Niedersächische Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kultur, Niedersächische Sparkassenstiftung, Braunschweigische Sparkassenstiftung

The exhibition João Gabriel. Almost Blue has been supported by Lehmann + Silva Gallery, Porto and made possible by
Niedersächische Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kultur, Stiftung Braunschweigischer Kulturbesitz

The Kunstverein Braunschweig e.V. is funded by
Stadt Braunschweig - Fachbereich Wissenschaft und Kultur