Fermín Jiménez Landa (1979 Pamplona, Spain. Lives in Valencia, Spain) & Lee Welch (1975 Louisville, USA. Lives in Rotterdam, the Netherlands) did not know each other before the invitation to participate in Amikejo. As if engaged in international diplomacy, the artists have had to get to know each other personally and artistically before issuing what might be regarded as a joint statement based on what they have agreed and negotiated, in the form of an exhibition. Jiménez Landa & Welch have chosen to establish their collaboration in relation to the notion of the micro nation and devices which delineate sovereignty – borders, stamps, anthems, flags, and so on.
Their project comprises a constellation of diverse performative, discursive and exhibited elements, some of which are directly apparent in the Laboratorio 987, having been developed in the space in the weeks leading up to the exhibition, while others have occurred at remote locations, or exist only in the imagination. A series of platforms constitute a space of assembly and discussion while a marching band from León has been recruited to compose and perform a national anthem for a new autonomous island state. Companioning this, another element comprises a series of letters sent by the artists using stamps from Moresnet, the republic which anteceded Amijeko. Jiménez Landa's & Welch's joint endeavour considers how art can produce new understanding, memories and communicative possibilities together with an audience.
Mousse Publishing will release the publication of the exhibition series In January 2012.
For the third installment of the Amikejo exhibition cycle, Uqbar (the occasional collaboration of artists Irene Kopelman and Mariana Castillo Deball) explores the idea of working together as a subject in itself. The “interchanges, mutations, transmutations, metamorphosis and contaminations that working together entails ... the hybrids we create together, not belonging to one or the other but rather creating an in between zone”, as the artists have described.
The exhibition evolves around the principal of chirality or ‘handedness’ – a property of an object that is not superimposable on its mirror image. The show is composed of a spiral staircase, which serves as a viewpoint for other artifacts and objects. Uqbar creates a psychedelic chiral ecosystem, featuring hanging papier-mâché epiphyte sculptures and enlarged stone microfossils, as well as “Banyan tree drawings, a video of a chemical reaction, fables among non-humans and drawings of hybrid creatures”.
Latitudes is a Barcelona-based [41º23’ N, 2º 11’ E] independent curatorial office initiated in April 2005 by Max Andrews and Mariana Cánepa Luna. Latitudes collaborates with artists and institutions in the conception, organisation and production of exhibitions, public commissions, conferences, editorial and research initiatives across local, pan-European and international situations. Latitudes is part of Hangar's 2010–12 Programming Committee. In 2010 Latitudes was awarded the inaugural curatorial prize GAC given by the Catalan gallery association. (+ info...)