Elvin José Díaz Tolentino

Born in 1979 in Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic)
Lives and works in in Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic)

Elvin José Díaz Tolentino graduated from the Pedro Henriquez Ureña National University (UNPHU), Santo Domingo (2003), and did a postgraduate course in Performance Studies at FLACSO, Santo Domingo (2006). Currently he is pursuing a Master ́s degree in Visual Arts in the Dominican Republic. Since 2014, his “BINATIONAL PROJECT” has explored the theme of the border, interconnection and exchange between two cultures: Haitian and Dominican. The artist has had more than 50 group and solo exhibitions as well as participated in art contests at the Museum of Art in the Bronx and the Museo del Barrio, both in New York. In 2010, he was selected to be part of DVD-Project, a travelling international video-art project organized by Stichting Idee-fixe (The Netherlands). In 2014 the artist presented an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Santo Domingo that explored Video-Art, Video-Installation, Video-Performance and documentation through the video of performance. His work has received many awards in the Dominican Republic.

Elvin José Díaz Tolentino writes of Placenta, his work on view at KB17: “This is a video performance that spawns from an action that takes place at the national border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic in a place called ‘No Man’s Land,’ where a Haitian and a Dominican man blow up a balloon so big they both can get inside until the pressure and movement make it burst. While trying to remain in the balloon, they begin to interact, to converge until the object takes their shape. This video performance provides different views of the same event: the horizontal and frontal views allow us to see in detail how these two men struggle to remain in the same space, and an overhead one permits us to witness the dilemma of two bodies trying to coexist in a limited and fragile space.”

Eduardo Gómez Ballesteros

Born in 1964 in Madrid (Spain)
Lives and works in Madrid (Spain)

Eduardo Gómez Ballesteros has a degree in Psychology (UAM, Spain) and a Doctorate in Fine Arts (UCM, Spain), with a doctoral thesis on the Cambodian genocide. His long artistic career is marked by the use of different artistic techniques: photography, drawing, etching, video-installation and public art. His main artistic project, the GENOCIDE PROJECT, consists of several series of works made by him based on archival images of political violence and genocide. It is a research project focused on artistic practice, history, philosophy and pedagogy. The art pieces created are fed by archival images of victims of violent political processes, collected in the countries of origin of the conflict, and photographs of places of torture, confinement and execution, carried out in the present. He has had numerous solo exhibitions in the Dominican Republic, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Lebanon, Portugal, the US, Colombia, Brazil, Germany, Japan, France and the UK, as well as in his native Spain. Currently he works as a professor of Contemporary Art and Culture and Audiovisual Language at the International University of La Rioja (UNIR).

For KB17 Eduardo Gómez Ballesteros has submitted work from his series HIROSHIMA, S-21 and BAS LA SOCIETÉ SPECTACULAIRE-MARCHANDE. Of HIROSHIMA, the artist writes: “The intentional killing of more than two hundred and fifty thousand people, in the eyes of the whole world, should be unanimously recognized as a mass murder. From images from the archive of The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, I converted some of these portraits of victims into photographic masks for a performance. This consisted of asking the participants, dressed all in black, to move and pose on a dark stage with the image as a mask. Thus, the photos take off from the intimate, to become a collective, moving device. I intend to anticipate a poetics of the ephemeral and the volatile.”

Jesús Hdez-Güero

Born in 1983 in Havana (Cuba)
Lives and works between Havana (Cuba) and Caracas (Venezuela)

Jesús Hdez-Güero attended the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts, Havana, between 1999 and 2003. He later entered the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) in Havana, earning his degree in Fine Arts in 2009. His work is not limited to a specific artistic medium, but depends on the idea to develop. His works have been presented in different exhibitions, including: Desplazamientos, la mayoría invisible: A Nation in a Few Words, Alejandro Otero Museum (MAO), Caracas, Venezuela; The Object and the Image (This is not a Chair Either), Concrete Space Project, Miami, USA; 9th Edition of the IILA-PHOTOGRAPHY Prize, Museum of Contemporary Art (MACRO), Rome, Italy; Iconocracia: Contemporary Cuban Photography, Atlantic Center for Modern Art (CAAM), Las Palmas de Gran Canarias (2016) and the Basque Center for Contemporary Art (Artium), Vitoria, Spain (2015); Zona Franca, 12th Biennial of Havana, Historical-Military Complex Morro-Cabaña, Havana, Cuba; The Spaces Between: Contemporary Art from Havana, Bildmuseet, Umeå University, Sweden (2015) and at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada (2014); TOUCHED, Liverpool Biennial, Visitor Center, Liverpool, UK; Experimental Video and Video Art: Artists from Cuba, Antioquia Museum, Medellín, Colombia; VII Biennial of Gwangju, South Korea; and States of Exchange: Artists from Cuba, Institute of International Visual Arts (IniVA), London, UK.

The video Minutos de odio contra sí mismo (Minutes of hate against oneself) shows a close up of the Venezuelan flag receiving eight bullets, which, one by one, replace the stars that normally adorn it. In his work, the artist reflects on the attacks, mutations and re-significances of media, social and political discourse that have caused the flag, and the nation, to suffer to such an extent that violence has became an integral part of Venezuelan identity.

Mayra Martell

Born in 1979 in Ciudad Juárez (Mexico)
Lives and works in Mexico City (Mexico)

Mayra Martell is a documentary photographer from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. She has worked primarily in areas of Latin America and Africa subjected to forced disappearance. Her largest projects in Latin America include Falsos positivos (2009), Cerro de Petare (2007), and Ensayo de la identidad (2005-2010). Falsos positivos, carried out in the impoverished outskirts of Bogota, documents the tragedy of young men who were kidnapped, killed, and presented as guerrilla casualties by the Colombian army. Cerro de Petare portrays everyday life in one of Caracas’ biggest and most violent slums. Ensayo de la identidad is a five-year project about the disappearance of women in Ciudad Juárez, a city whose social fabric has been torn by violence. Martell has received many distinctions and awards. At the 4^th International Photobook Festival in Kassel, Germany, she won first prize in the Reviewer Award 2011 and second prize in the Dummy Award 2011. She is currently working on a project called Sexy Mafia which proposes an exploration of the concept of beauty in Culiacan, Sinaloa, Mexico´s main drug-trafficking city.

For KB17, Mayra Martell has presented work from her series on Ciudad Juárez and the Western Sahara. Of her Ciudad Juárez series, she writes: “It’s been five years since the downtown started to disappear, becoming a battleground for drug cartels, the scene of murdered women and the vanishing place for countless people. Ciudad Juárez is the paramount example of a society that is consuming itself without being able to stop.  I believe that there is something there in those spaces that makes people forget that other places exist; as if one had no past, like the city itself. Perhaps I like it because it has no memory, or at least not one as obvious as other places where I’ve been. It’s as if it had collapsed and something broke inside; it’s like the life-essence of someone in disgrace, so overwhelmed by her loss that she has become stuck, stranded in the same place; a place of sadness. Juárez is like an old and abandoned kitchen; as the sun rises, buses can be seen roaming about like iron cockroaches crawling on a dirty, retched floor; a floor in ruins; a lonely floor.”

Jason Mena

Born in 1974 in New York (USA)
Lives and works between Puerto Rico and Mexico City (Mexico)

Jason Mena is an interdisciplinary artist examining patterns and contradictions in a social formation, focusing mainly on the informal sector, its broad economic structure, and its prevalence and diversity in all social classes. He received a BFA from Escuela de Artes Plásticas y Diseño (EAPD) in Puerto Rico and attended Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts (Bard College MFA Program) in New York, earning his Master's degree from the School of Visual Arts (SVA). His work has been exhibited individually and as part of collectives in venues including the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MADC) in Costa Rica; Modern Art Museum (MAM) in the Dominican Republic; Unicorn Centre for Art in Beijing; National Museum of Fine Arts (MNBA) in Argentina; Hessel Museum of Art in New York; Ex Teresa Arte Actual and Carrillo Gil Contemporary Art Museum (MACG) in Mexico City; Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts (CCA) and Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) in California; National Center for Contemporary Arts (NCCA) in Moscow; Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) in North Adams; Puerto Rico Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC) and the 2nd and 3rd editions of The San Juan Poly/Graphic Triennial, among others.

Jason Mena has submitted a video for KB17 called Fault Line as well as a series of photographs entitled Failed States. Fault Line is a drawing in motion; a mark that delineates geographies, that conforms and forms, but also one that represents occupation and rupture. In a symbolic gesture, a continuous line is drawn with chalk marking the perimeter of Unidad Habitacional Nonoalco-Tlatelolco. Here, chalk—a porous material frequently employed for didactic purposes—represents and traces a jagged and rough historic route that paradoxically disrupts the linear conception of history. Failed States, a commentary on the G-7 group of industrialized nations, is a photographic documentation of an action, where the body is employed as a geopolitical metaphor ultimately subdued to its immediate context.

Roxana Nagygellér

Born in 1963 in Alajuela (Costa Rica)
Lives and works in San José (Costa Rica)

 Roxana Nagygellér received a Diploma of Photography Arts and Sciences from the College of Alajuela, Costa Rica in 1997. She has also carried out independent studies of photography, videocreation, politics and cultural management, installation and set design, traditional and artistic "bindings," as well as the history of art and philosophy at various museums and artistic production centers, including the University of Costa Rica and the Cultural Center of Spain. She has produced editorial, documentary and commercial photography for several magazines. The artist has had six solo exhibitions and has participated in more than 30 group shows of photography and video in Costa Rica, France, the Dominican Republic, the Netherlands, Mexico, Guatemala and Nicaragua. She was selected for the Central American Biennial of Visual Arts in several editions, as well as for other national and international competitions

Roxana Nagygellér has submitted photographs from her series Letters to Nicolas for KB17. This is a series of portraits of migrant men in Costa Rica. This is a continuation of earlier work in which she explored the migrant experience for women. That series, entitled People in their Place, was an easier task for the artist. She states: “The work with women was fluid and fun for me. In Letters to Nicolas the approach to strangers was more complex. I felt more questioned, more watched. It was more difficult to break the ice with men. I converted the photographs into diptychs, generating a dialogue between texts, clouds and portraits. The letters are like messages carried by the wind. Written by migrant children from slums in the capital, they attempted to answer the questions: Who am I? Where do I come from? These are questions we all ask ourselves at some point in our lives.”

Gilda Pérez

Born in 1954 in Havana (Cuba)
Lives and works in Miami (USA)

Gilda Pérez is among the pioneers of modern Cuban women photographers. She was one of the first photographers (and the only woman in a group of six) to exhibit in the United States during the Cold War, at the University of California in 1982. She has had numerous solo exhibitions in Cuba, Spain, Switzerland, Canada and Venezuela and been part of group shows in more than 50 countries. Her most recent group exhibition was ¡Cuba, Cuba! 65 Years of Photography presented by the International Center of Photography, New York in 2015. Her work is included in renowned photography collections, including the Mexican Council of Photography (Mexico) and the Musée de l´Elysée (Switzerland). For 20 years she made Venezuela her home, but now lives and works in the US.

Gilda Pérez is exhibiting work from her series Out of Home for KB17. Of her practice, the artist writes: “As a photographer I have always been looking for spaces of quotidian life that do not get enough attention from us. I am not talking about the myth of photographers who see what common people do not see. I am talking about things that do not seem important: an abandoned doll in a yard, a lonely man contemplating a landscape, a rundown gas station, an old fashioned car parked in front of an iconic theater in Havana, my own house. I am also interested in the lives of ordinary people: farmers, workers, passengers. Those are my punctums (to put it in the words of Barthes). My punctums are the small realities inside reality. In that sense, my work is influenced by photographers such as Walker Evans, David ‘Chim’ Seymour, Dorothea Lange and Imogen Cummingham.”

Lucila Quieto

Born in 1977 in Buenos Aires (Argentina)
Lives and works in Buenos Aires (Argentina)

Lucila Quieto studied photography at the Escuela de Fotografía Creativa, Buenos Aires subsequently used photography, painting and collage as part of her artistic practice. Her work, Arqueología de la ausencia (Archeology of Absence, 1999-2001), has been exhibited in many countries, including Argentina, Italy, France and the UK. Her work has also been included in many joint exhibitions with other artists who are also children of disappeared parents, including Amontonados: Temporalidades de la infancia (2010), Anacronías (2011), Familias Q’heridas (2011), and Ficciones: Imágenes que construyen sentidos sobre el pasado (2017). In 2010 she co-founded Colectivo de hijos, a group of children of disappeared parents who, through art groups such as the Club del Collage and published books, have tried to influence public policies directed at the relatives of victims of the 1976-1983 Argentine dictatorship. Currently she works in the photography section of the Archivo Nacional de la Memoria, located in the former clandestine torture and detention center, the ESMA. 

Carlos Alberto Quieto disappeared five months before the artist’s birth. In Arqueología de la ausencia, on view at KB17, Quieto combines fiction and biography, as well as performance and photography, to explore the disappearance of her father. Rather than just focusing on her own family history, however, she also invited other children of disappeared parents to participate in the work, placing an advertisement in a branch of HIJOS (Hijos por la Identidad y la Justicia contra el Olvido y el Silencio) with the following tempting offer: “Now you can have the picture you always wanted.” Quieto remembers: “I asked every son or daughter to look for a photograph of their parents. I then reproduced the images as slides. I projected them on the wall and asked the children to insert themselves between the camera and the image.” The experiment resulted in 35 black-and-white photographs each showing a playful and fictional scene that imagines alternative futures for those families. The images of Arqueología de la ausencia are thus answers to a disturbing question: what might have happened had the disappeared survived? Quieto’s montages speak of a time that is neither in the past nor in the present but in what she calls “a third time,” an invented, dream-like temporality, a dimension where everything, even the impossible, seems plausible.

Sara Roitman

Born in 1953 in Santiago (Chile)
Lives and works in Quito (Ecuador)

Throughout her trajectory as a photographer, Sara Roitman has incorporated video art, installation, objects, neon, embroidery and sewing into her repertoire of artistic practices. Her work is about creating and rearranging spaces of reflection and speculation. Her work has been exhibited in Ecuador, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Israel, the US and Singapore. In 2009 she published IMPERDIBLE, a photographic book of her artwork that won several international awards, including the Gold Medal, Sappi in Johannesburg, South Africa. Her artworks are in private collections and in public institutions.

Sara Roitman writes of her work on view at KB17: “Combining works of different series under a single title is not uncommon in my artistic practices. I have been working with the human body for many years from different aspects and perspectives. I picture the geographies of bodies; I picture the body as territory; I displace the body and make it fade. The photographic works: S/T I and S/T II portray the body after the soul abandons it. The portrait is an attempt to shape a body and its soul fading away and the emptiness that is perceived in its displacement. In the works Territorios I and Territorios II I create fictional geographies of the same bodies that make us doubt if it is about more than one person in the same territory.”

Elisabetta di Sopra

Born in 1969 in Pordenone (Italy)
Lives and works in Venice (Italy)

Elisabetta di Sopra graduated in 2010 from the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice; her thesis was on American artist Bill Viola. Her artistic research is expressed through the use of video language to investigate the most sensitive dynamics of everyday dimensions, as well as its unexpressed interior stories in which the female body plays a key role. She writes of her practice: “I'm the protagonist of my videos, the body is the privileged tool of expressing my work, it becomes a metaphor for our being in the world and thus the video art. Like music, like dance, it is a delicate gesture that actually materializes our feelings. Almost no dialogue exists in my videos. The body speaks through minimal gestures.” Di Sopra’s work has been featured in numerous exhibitions and festivals, including: MARCA Museum, (IT); "Possible Senses", Pizzinato Gallery, Pordenone (IT); Artist-run, Gallery Galaway, Ireland; THE PLAGIO D'ARTE D'ARTE, conference - Academy of Fine Arts Bologna; AUTHORITRATES The Showroom London; Paratissima 11, Turin (IT); and Künstlerhaus - body interference, Vienna; among many others.

Elisabetta di Sopra simply states of Dust Grains, on view at KB17: “Distant memories, those of childhood, are like dust grains in the eye...”

Marco Nereo Rotelli

Born in 1955 in Venice (Italy)
Lives and works between Venice and Milan (Italy)

Marco Nereo Rotelli was trained in architecture in Venice. For years he has researched light and the poetic dimension, which Harald Szeemann has defined as “an expansion of the artistic contest.” He has worked with philosophers, musicians, photographers and film directors. But his primary interest remains in the relationship between art and poetry, which has become a constant reference in his work. In 2000 he founded the group Art Project, directed by Elena Lombardi and composed of young artists and architects; together they have realized numerous interventions and urban installation projects. Rotelli has participated in eight editions of the Biennale di Venezia, as well as numerous individual and collective exhibitions. His works are in important museums and private collections all over the world.

Marco Nereo Rotelli writes of his installation on view at KB17: “These long flags are spiritual and existential spaces. The way I see it, poetry is not just poetry for its rhymes and contents. From the art point of view, it is the possibility of visuals in the world of words, even a possibility to think the sound and the space in the time of a verse. These fabrics are like standards which wave the rights of humanity.”

Federico Nero

Born in 1977 in Padua (Italy)
Lives and works in Milan and Venice (Italy)

Federico Nero is an Italian video and visual artist. He attended the Institute of Photography and Visual Art of Padua, where he later became a professor. In 1999, as a very young graphic artist, Nero began working for Macintosh Quadra 700, becoming one of the most talented Italians working in the “creative image” field. His passion for art and dedication to photography led him to collaborate with artist Michael Lin in Shanghai, director Pedro Almodovar in Madrid and sculptor Adolfo Barnatan. Nero also worked as an assistant to fashion designer Vittorio Moltedo – founder of Bottega Veneta. In 2006, drawing upon his mixed professional experiences, Nero began to work as a fashion photographer in Milan with Safilo Group, creating campaigns for Louis Vuitton and Fendi. His photographic works and video installations as a contemporary artist are the result of ongoing research between inner and outer world, religion and science, philosophy and history. His solo shows include “Supersymmetry” curated by Carola Cometto, Riviera International Film Festival, Ex Convento dell’annunciata, Sestri Levante, Italy (2017) and “Supersymmetry” curated by Carola Cometto, CB32, Milan, Italy (2016).

Taking on the theme of KB17, Nero throws a direct gaze at his generation. As he explains: “We occidentals, passive and blind, sons of superficiality and ego, simply don’t see.” In his video, an open-air party near a water purification plant starts while faraway noises of shooting, helicopters and bombings grow ever near. “The world falls apart and we dance,” says the artist.

Yoko Ono

Born in 1933 in Tokyo (Japan)
Lives and works in Nutopia

Yoko Ono is an artist whose thought-provoking work challenges people’s understanding of art and the world around them. From the beginning of her career, she was a Conceptualist whose work encompassed performance, instructions, film, music, and writing.

Ono was born in Tokyo in 1933, and moved to New York in 1953, following her studies in philosophy in Japan. By the late 1950s, she had become part of New York Cityʼs vibrant avant-garde activities. In 1960, she opened her Chambers Street loft, where she and La Monte Young presented a series of radical performances and exhibited realizations of some of her early conceptual works. In 1961, she had a one- person show of her Instruction Paintings at George Maciunas’ legendary AG Gallery in New York, and later that year, she performed a solo concert at Carnegie Recital Hall of revolutionary works involving movement, sound, and voice. In 1962, she returned to Tokyo, where, at the Sogetsu Art Center, she extended her New York performance and exhibited her Instructions for Paintings. In 1964, Ono performed Cut Piece in Kyoto and Tokyo, and published Grapefruit, a book of her collected conceptual instruction pieces. At the end of that year, she returned to New York. In 1965, she performed Cut Piece during her concert at Carnegie Recital Hall, Bag Piece during a solo event for the Perpetual Fluxus Festival, and she performed Sky Piece to Jesus Christ during the Fluxorchestra concert at Carnegie Recital Hall that September. In 1966, she made the first version of Film No. 4 (Bottoms), and realized a collaborative installation The Stone, at the Judson Gallery. In the fall of 1966, she was invited to take part in the Destruction in Art Symposium in London, and later that year, held one-person exhibitions at the Indica Gallery, and the Lisson Gallery the following year. During this period, she also performed a number of concerts throughout England. In 1969, together with John Lennon, she realized Bed-In, and the worldwide War Is Over! (if you want it) campaign for peace. Ono has made a number of films, including Fly and Rape, and many records, including Fly, Approximately Infinite Universe, Rising, and Between My Head and the Sky. She has had numerous exhibitions in museums throughout the world, including traveling exhibitions organized by the Museum of Modern Art Oxford and the Japan Society in New York. In 2009, she exhibited ANTONʼS MEMORY at the Bevilacqua Foundation in Venice, and received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement from the Venice Biennale. Among numerous recent exhibitions, in 2010, she exhibited IʼLL BE BACK at the Studio Stefania Miscetti in Rome, and DAS GIFT at the Haunch of Venison in Berlin. In 2011, she showed participatory installation pieces at the Wanås Foundation in Sweden, and the Yokohama Triennale, and held four one-person exhibitions in Tokyo, New York, and Hiroshima, including Road of Hope—Yoko Ono 2011 at the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, where she was honored with the prestigious 8th Hiroshima Art Prize for her dedicated peace activism. In 2013, YOKO ONO: HALF-A-WIND SHOW – A RETROSPECTIVE opened at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, which then traveled to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, Kunsthalle Krems in Austria, and Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain. YOKO ONO: ONE WOMAN SHOW, 1960-1971 opened at The Museum of Modern Art in New York in May 2015. In the fall of 2015, Ono had one-person exhibitions at Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (MOT) and the FAURSCHOU FOUNDATION BEIJING, as well as a major retrospective at MAC Lyon in France. In October 2016, Ono unveiled her permanent installation SKYLANDING in Chicago’s Jackson Park, and her one-person exhibition at the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki, Greece, was warmly received. Currently, Ono’s work is featured at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC in her exhibition YOKO ONO: Four Works for Washington and the World. Three of her installations will be running concurrently in Venice: MIRROR IMAGE at Palazzo Mora, ‘EX IT Destruction’ at Palazzo Michiel, and INVISIBLE PEOPLE on the Lido. Other current and upcoming exhibitions include her one-person exhibition YOKO ONO: VOICE OF A WOMAN at Galerie Ziegler, Zurich, and a group exhibition Duet with Artist. Participation as Artistic Principle at Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Germany, which then travels to 21her Haus in Vienna. In 2007, she created the permanent installation IMAGINE PEACE TOWER on Viðey Island, Iceland, and continues to work tirelessly for peace with her IMAGINE PEACE campaign.

ONOCHORD

Send the ONOCHORD message:

“I LOVE YOU”

by repeatedly blinking the light

in the frequencies and durations

required for the message:

from ships

from the top of the mountains

from buildings

using whole buildings

in town squares

from the sky

and to the sky.

Keep sending the message

until the end of the year

and beyond.

Keep sending the message

everywhere on the earth

and to the universe

keep sending.

For individuals:

send the message by hand

or using flashlights

or with lighters

The message I LOVE YOU in ONOCHORD is:

I             i

LOVE    ii

YOU      iii

I love you !

yoko ono  2004

Max Papeschi

Born in 1970 in Milan (Italy)
Lives and works in Milan (Italy)

After working as a writer and director for theatre, TV and cinema, Max Papeschi turned his attention to digital-art. Since then, no political or cultural figure has been spared his scathing wit, whether it be Kermit the Frog, Josef Stalin, Mickey Mouse, Adolf Hitler or Hello Kitty. Papeschi has had numerous exhibitions all over the world.

Flavia Vago has written of Max Papeschi’s work on view at KB17: “In 2016 Max Papeschi realized his work IT’S ALL DEVO in digital animation technique for his friend and collector, Gerald Casale. Casale is a member of DEVO, a revolutionary American band that is a symbol of New Wave...Casale asked Papeschi to make a music video, which he did, in collaboration with Maurizio Temporin…[in it] a dystopian reality is presented; a mass of horrific characters who represent the most disturbing aspects of our contemporary age.”

Michelangelo Pistoletto

Born in 1933 in Biella (Italy)
Lives and works between Biella and Turin (Italy)

A leading figure in the development of Arte Povera and Conceptual art, Michelangelo Pistoletto is well known for his “mirror paintings” beginning in the 1960s, which first used grounds of metallic paint on canvas before rejecting canvas entirely for polished steel. In 2003 he was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale. At the same Biennale he presented Love Difference - Artistic Movement for an InterMediterranean Politic, a project born in April 2002 at Cittadellarte, for which Pistoletto made a large reflecting table in the shape of the Mediterranean basin, around which many of the subsequent activities of Love Difference took place. In 2004 Turin University graduated him with a laurea honoris causa in Political Science. On that occasion the artist publicly announced the most recent phase of his work, Third Paradise, whose symbol is a reconfiguration of the mathematical sign for infinity conceived by the artist in 2003. From 2007, with the collaboration between Pistoletto and the musician Gianna Nannini, curated by Zerynthia - RAM Radioartemobile, the Third Paradise evolved into a multimedia work in progress. In 2007, in Jerusalem, Pistoletto was awarded the Wolf Foundation Prize in the Arts, “for his constantly inventive career as an artist, educator and activist whose restless intelligence has created prescient forms of art that contribute to fresh understanding of the world.” In 2010 he wrote the essay The Third Paradise, published in Italian, English, French and German. In 2011 he was the artistic director of Evento 2011 – L'art pour une ré-évolution urbaine in Bordeaux. In 2012 he started promoting the Rebirth-day, first worldwide day of rebirth, celebrated every year on 21st December with initiatives taking place all around the world. In that same year he is bestowed the title of Grand Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic. In 2013 the Louvre in Paris hosted his personal exhibition Michelangelo Pistoletto, année un – le paradis sur terre. In this same year he received the Praemium Imperiale for painting, in Tokyo. In 2014 the symbol of the Third Paradise was installed in the hall of the headquarters of the Council of the European Union in Brussels for the period of the Italian Presidency of the European Council.  In May 2015 he received a degree honoris causa from the Universidad de las Artes of Havana in Cuba for "his contribution to contemporary art and his influence on several generations of artists". In October of the same year he realizes a work, called Rebirth, in the park of the Palais des Nations in Geneva, headquarters of the UN, costituted of a huge symbol of the Third Paradise formed of 193 stones, one for each UN State Member.

Michelangelo Pistoletto states of his work for KB17: “The Third Paradise is the third stage of human society. The first is the ancestral stage dominated by nature, the second is the artificial stage dominated by art, science and technology. Today we are entering the third stage which will evolve in equilibrium between nature and artifice. Creating this equilibrium is the job we will do together, there is work for everyone."

Malala Andrialavidrazana

Born in 1971 in (Madagascar)
Lives and practices in Paris (France)

By way of the photographic medium, Malala Andrialavidrazana’s practice interrogates barriers and interactions within cross-cultural contexts, thoughtfully shifting between private spaces and global considerations to explore social imaginaries. Based on extensive in situ as well as bibliographic and archival research, her visual compositions open up the possibility of alternative forms of storytelling and history-making. Andrialavidrazana graduated from La Villette School of Architecture (Paris) in 1996. Her d’Outre-Monde series was awarded the prestigious HSBC Prize for Photography, and released in print by the renowned Actes Sud publishing house in 2004. She received the joint support of the Institut Français and the National Arts Council of South Africa for her series Echoes (from Indian Ocean), published in 2013 by Kehrer Verlag. At the moment, Andrialavidrazana is at work on an ongoing series titled Figures, highlighted in the present installation. Over the past years, Andrialavidrazana’s work has been exhibited in numerous international venues. Recently, these have included: Bamako Encounters (Mali 2015); Museum of Natural History (Le Havre, France 2016); Kehrer Galerie (Berlin 2016); Changjiang International Photography & Video Biennial (Chonqing, China 2017); Kalmar Konstmuseum (Kalmar, Sweden 2017); PAC Milano (Milan 2017); Lyon Biennial (Lyon 2017); C-Gallery (Milan 2017); 50 Golborne (London 2017).

Figures is the title of Malala Andrialavidrazana’s most recent series of works, an ongoing project initiated in 2015. In the present installation, the works are shown as large-scale projections. This is unusual; typically, they are displayed as physical prints over one meter in height. Overlays of 19^th and 20^th century maps, bank notes and stamps cut, reshaped and rethought by the artist, give rise in Figures to novel cartographies that speak powerful truth to power. Individually and as a unit, the resulting works highlight falsehoods inherent in the colonizing powers’ claim to objective and rational “knowledge” – to the North’s (ongoing) deployment of science as a weapon in the subjugation of peoples and territories. Clichés, pre- and misconceptions are at once subtly and incisively brought to the fore, as are fundamental misunderstandings as to how maps function and to what ends. The resulting works demand of the viewer that s/he (re)consider her position not only as a subject gazing at a work of art, but also as an actor in the forging of a world riven with the violence of power relations.

Kongo Astronauts

Born Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of Congo), 2013.
Live and practice where time and place allow

Brought into being in 2013 by artists based in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kongo Astronauts navigates the vertigo of multiple, parallel worlds. Faced with the violence of today’s robotically enhanced planet, Kongo Astronauts responds with art. Never fixed – for it is a collective whose membership is ever in flux – Kongo Astronauts builds upon differences and upon the confrontation of diverse experiences, corralled, all, in an attempt to resist the psychological ghettos that characterize lives lived in the postcolonial era. Kongo Astronauts manifests in the interzones of digital globalization, wherein past, present and future collide, impacting politics of intimacy and identity in urban and rural settings alike. At work and play in the field of post-disciplinary action, Kongo Astronauts materializes in cosmic appearances and polysemic fictions (performances, films, texts, photos…), immersing viewers/listeners/bystanders in a multidimensional engagement with the experience of exile and the quest for survival.

SPARCK has chosen to show three films by the Kongo Astronauts collective, all associated with a series titled Postcolonial Dilemna. All three speak to the artists’ refusal to take at face value the world they inhabit and their insistence on seeking out alternative ways of engaging with and bypassing its political, economic and psychological violence. The third film, Postcolonial Dilemna Track #03 (Unended) is properly oneiric. An astronaut ambles through a tropical forest, making his (her?) way toward a massive waterfall. The astronaut is a key protagonist in several of the collective’s “works”:  unscripted performances in the streets of Kinshasa, an ever-expanding series of photographs by Kongo Astronauts and by others, films such as the one seen here, music videos (for example by Congolese rapper Baloji and new and upcoming Kinshasa-based group Mbongwana Star). The astronaut is a perplexing persona, unnamed, mysterious, ever changing, as the artists transform her/his appearance. Here, the notion of the cyborg exits the realm of science fiction to enter that of the every-day world, questioning in richly poetic image-ways terms of engagement with a post-capitalist order determined to do away with such exquisite spaces as the landscape the astronaut is traversing.   

Eléonore Hellio

Born in 1966 in Paris (France)
Lives and works in Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of Congo)

In collaboration with Huguette Kilembi, Emery Mohamba, Blaise Mandefu, Irène Kamba, Mbuku Kimpala, Matthieu Kasiama, Jean Kawata, Mao Kinguza, Daniel Mumvunzi, Cedrick Tamasala. Eléonore Hellio’s interest in electronic arts arose in the beginning of the 1990s, when she became one of the main co-operating artists of the Electronic Café International. Today as an artist and a teacher, she develops open creative systems and educational programs in various contexts with numerous partners, most of whom are based on the African continent. Network Art, with or without technology, is at the heart of her practice. Since 1996, Hellio has been teaching art and media at the Haute Ecole des Arts du Rhin in Strasbourg and, since 2006, at Kinshasa’s Académie des Beaux-Arts. She organizes workshops, makes films, installations, performances and publishes texts and photographic work, as a solo practitioner and in collaboration with numerous life professionals, notably in the context of Kongo Astronauts, a collective that she founded in 2013 with performance artist Michel Ekeba. Simultaneously, she is involved in a wide range of art and research projects bringing together international thinkers around questions relating to the impact of digital globalization and challenges posed by the postcolonial era. On a regular basis, she collaborates with SPARCK, a multi-platform, experimental Pan-African curatorial platform, and has established the eternalnetwork.org hub.

Eléonore Hellio’s video Upside Down World is on view at KB17. Hellio herself, at pains to underscore that this is a collective work, elaborated with ten artists based in Lusanga whom she led in a 2016 workshop, explains that the video was filmed on the grounds of an ongoing project with which she has been closely associated. Initiated in 2014 by Dutch artist Renzo Martens in Lusanga, on a cacao plantation owned by the US conglomerate Unilever, the project bears the name CATPC (Cercle d’art des travailleurs de plantation congolaise). In part, the work is a response to the presence on the project site of an artwork by German artist Carsten Höller: a set of goggles that allow those who wear them to see the world upside down.  Well known on the Euro-American contemporary art scene, Höller’s goggles were discussed at length by the workshop participants as a metaphor for the “North’s” misreading of Congolese lives and experiences.

Goddy Leye

1965 (Mbouda, Cameroun) - 2011 (Bonendale, Cameroun)
Lived and worked in Bonendale (Cameroun)

Goddy Leye (AKA Godfried Kadjo) was, and very much remains, a central figure on the Cameroonian contemporary art scene. His practice as a multi-media creator and, in particular, his pioneering video work introduced the latter genre to Central Africa in the 1990s. As a teacher and a mentor, he played a key role in the emergence of an entire generation of Cameroonian artists, several of whom have gone on to successful international careers. From 1986 to 1989, Leye attended the University of Yaoundé. While working on a Master’s degree in African literature (which he received in 1990), he simultaneously studied with art historian and artist Pascal Kenfack (1987-1992). From, there, he moved on to the National Institute in Bamako (Mali), where he studied in 1994, the ZKM Karlsruhe Centre for Art and Media (Germany, 1997), the 18^th Street Arts Complex (Santa Monica, California, 1997), and the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten (Amsterdam, 2002). Determined to help develop the art scene in his native Cameroon, in 2002 Leye settled in the village of Bonendale, on the outskirts of Douala, the country’s economic capital. There, he founded the Art Bakery, a research and residency space where he welcomed young artists in quest of training in multimedia, installation, video and digital practices. While numerous projects and residencies took him abroad on a regular basis (to London, Cairo, Guangzhou and multiple cities in between), he always returned to the Art Bakery, his primary focus from 2002 until his untimely passing in 2011. Leye received key prizes for his work as an artist and an educator from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Rockefeller Foundation and UNESCO. An ambassador for the Creative Africa Network (CAN), he sat on expert committees the world over.

Goddy Leye’s iconic video The Beautiful Beast is on view at KB17. In it, a man writhes on the ground against a pixelated field. We know nothing of him, save that he seems in pain. Or might he be grinning? The image is violently disturbing. Overhead, coming in waves, is a soundscape: Fritz Lang’s 1927 masterpiece, “M”.  A Hitlerian voice battles with another, a voice of reason and demand: demand that the man on the ground be treated with care or perhaps, simply, with basic human sympathy. We will never know which voice wins out.

Tabita Rezaire

Born in 1989 in Paris (France)
Lives and works in Johannesburg (South Africa)

Tabita Rezaire is a French – of Guyanese/Danish descent – video artist, health-tech-politics practitioner and Kemetic/Kundalini yoga teacher based in Johannesburg. She holds a bachelor’s degree in economics (Paris) and a master’s degree in artist moving image from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design (London). Rezaire is a founding member of the artist group NTU, half of the duo Malaxa, and mother of the energy house SENEB. Artsy declared Rezaire among the “emerging artists to watch for in 2017,” Artnet among the “international Black artists of 2016,” and True Africa amid the “top opinion makers of the African continent in 2015”. In 2017, she presented her first solo show, Exotic Trade, at the Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg. Her work has been shown internationally – notably at the Victoria and Albert Museum (London), the National Gallery of Denmark, the Berlin Biennale, the Tate Modern (London), the Museum of Modern Art (Paris), MoCADA (New York City), and The Broad (Los Angeles). She has also presented her work on numerous panels – Het Nieuwe Institut (Rotterdam), the Royal Academy (The Hague), the Kunsthalle (Bern), the National Gallery (Harare), Cairotronica (Cairo), Fakugezi Digital Art Africa (Johannesburg). Rezaire has curated screenings at the Institute of Contemporary Art (London), led spiritual technology workshops worldwide, and seen her writing published by Intellect books. Tabita Rezaire’s practice unearths the possibilities of decolonial healing through the politics of technology. Navigating architectures of power – online and offline – her works tackle the pervasive matrix of coloniality and its effects on identity, technology, sexuality, health and spirituality. Through screen interfaces, her digital healing activism offers substitute readings to dominant narratives, decentering occidental authority.

Inner Fire is a series of life-size digital self-portrait collages exploring the politics of the artist’s identities, aspirations and contradictions. The images respectively embody an archetype of the black woman in regard to race, sex, spirituality, technology and capital, mapping how those narratives affect her own as well as collective imaginaries and identities.