domenica 28 agosto 2016

Padiglione Polacco - Call for artists


The Minister of Culture and National Heritage and Zachęta – National Gallery of Art announce a competition for the curatorial project for the exhibition in the Polish Pavilion at the 57th International Art Exhibition in Venice in 2017.
The curatorial project should contain the exhibition concept and the original theme of the exhibition, a full scenario of the exhibition with visualisation, a summary of the exhibition scenario and an estimated budget for the production of the project.
The curator of the project, and in the case of a curatorial team at least one person should have:
  • complete higher education;
  • good knowledge of contemporary art, curatorial experience in organizing exhibitions;
  • a good level of English.
An emblem should be placed on the project to serve as a code making secret the identity of the curator of the project.  The project should have attached a closed envelope with the emblem on it, which should contain:
  • copy of the emblem;
  • name of the curator;
  • curator’s postal and e-mail address, phone number;
  • curator’s CV;
  • filled and signed “Curator’s declaration” which is annexed to the competition rules.
After the announcement of the results of the competition, the exhibition concept and the summary of the exhibition scenario of all the submitted projects will become public. Making available a full scenario of the exhibition, together with the visualization of the project may take place only with the written consent of the curator.
The deadline for submitting projects is set for 20th September 2016. In the case of submissions by post or courier service, the date of receipt of the project by the Organizer’s secretariat is decisive. Organizer’s secretariat working hours 10–16 Monday-Friday. Organizer address:
Zachęta – National Gallery of Art
plac Małachowskiego 3
00-916 Warsaw, Poland
with a header “Biennale Sztuki 2017”


sabato 20 agosto 2016

Zai Kuning per Singapore





Il National Arts Council di Singapore ha selezionato l'artista Zai Kuning.

Tema del progetto sarà Dapunta Hyang Sri Jayanasa, il primo Maharaja della regione Srivijaya.

Curatore dell'evento sarà June Yap.
 


Dal sito NAC 

 The National Arts Council (NAC) today announced the appointment of Singapore multidisciplinary artist, Zai Kuning, and curator and art historian, June Yap, as the artistic team representing Singapore at the 2017 Venice Biennale from 13 May to 26 November 2017. Their proposal, Dapunta Hyang, is a culmination of over 20 years of Zai’s research on Malay culture and history in Southeast Asia, as part of a broader inquiry on identity that includes his having spent more than a decade with and creating work on the Orang Laut (sea gypsies) — the pre-nation and pre-colonial inhabitants of both island and sea in the region.

The exhibition for the Biennale extends a series produced in recent years that takes as its vantage point Dapunta Hyang Sri Jayanasa, the first Maharaja of the early kingdom of Śrīvijaya. Considered the first large state of ‘world economic stature’ of its time in Southeast Asia, the empire of Śrīvijaya stood at the crossroads of the maritime route between China and India, where merchant vessels plying their trade brought about an exchange of cultural influences, religious ideas, and goods. The success and influence of the empire is captured within Zai’s work in a symbol of voyage central to the exhibition.

Besides the history of the Śrīvijaya empire, Dapunta Hyang also points to the history of the Malay language and the establishment of Old Malay as the region’s lingua franca. The transmission and spread of the Malay language is a subject that has also surfaced in Zai’s work on the Orang Laut and his documentation of what remains of the Mak Yong opera in Riau, in that the Mak Yong may be traced to the Pattani kingdom via its Pattani-Kelantan Malay dialect. Having been immersed in Ghazal music and Zapin dance performance, and appreciating the livelihoods and cultures of the Riau islands from a young age, Zai considers the Mak Yong opera as a crucial and much neglected part of the region’s cultural history and relationships. Where artefact may not survive the passage of time, in language we find the traces of cultural development and transmission, in this instance also calling to mind Austronesian connections.

As the only Singaporean artist exploring our collective regional history through the pre-Islamic Śrīvijaya era, Zai explains, "Dapunta Hyang allows me to delve deep into a history and heritage of Southeast Asia not commonly found in history books on the Malay peoples and culture. As an aesthetic project, however, it is not a presentation of history in material and object, or as ideology and in politics. Rather it is about a sense of fellowship and solidarity that arises from knowing who we are. I am keen to have audiences spend time reflecting upon the elements the work combines: of craft in the sculpture of the ship, the subject of knowledge as embodied in the waxed books, the portraits of islanders and Mak Yong, and the voice of the Mak Yong master who speaks in a language rarely heard now in Singapore and Malaysia, even Indonesia.

As for the concept of transmission of knowledge, it is not merely about a passing of information. Instead the receiver’s imagination is essential to this process. But even received knowledge and their interpretation should not simply be taken as given. Dapunta Hyang is thus a prompt and a means to attend to this history and the knowledge that go back in time. Not just from 50 or 200 years ago, but centuries, back to the 7th century, in order to understand what and who we are, and the actions and even accidents that brought us here."

Ms. Kathy Lai, CEO of NAC and Co-Chair of the Commissioning Panel, adds, “Dapunta Hyang invites us to reflect on the region we are in, its past and how its heritage has been transmitted through the trajectories of empire, language and culture. Zai’s proposal stood out strongly as it spotlights forgotten stories of a people whose culture influenced what we recognise as ‘Southeast Asian’ today. The uncovering of forgotten histories will, I believe, strike a chord with the international audience at the Venice Biennale.”

Continuing from Zai’s series of installations that were previously presented at Ota Fine Arts (2014), the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore (2014), Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay (2015), Art Basel Hong Kong (2015) and Palais de Tokyo (Paris, 2015), Dapunta Hyang will be his most complex and intricate installation to date. Audiences in Singapore will have the opportunity to preview the work in progress and interact with Zai at the studio space in Gillman Barracks, before it leaves for the Venice Biennale.

More details about the public programmes in September 2016 will be available on gillmanbarracks.com and nac.gov.sg.

lunedì 8 agosto 2016

Curatori per Malta



Arts Council Malta has announced that Raphael Vella and Bettina Hutschek will be the two artist-curators for the Malta Pavilion at the Biennale di Venezia to be held between 13th May and 26th November 2017.


Arts Council Malta has announced that Raphael Vella and Bettina Hutschek will be the two artist-curators for the Malta Pavilion at the Biennale di Venezia to be held between 13th May and 26th November 2017.
With their concept Homo Melitensis: An incomplete inventory in 19 chapters, the two artist-curators will present the Malta Pavilion as a poetic compilation of unique things that supposedly define the imaginary of the Maltese identity.
The exhibition will be designed in collaboration with an architectural team led by Tom Van Malderen (Architecture Project). A transmedia storyworld developed in collaboration with Stefan Kolgen will augment Homo Melitensis by creating an interactive and expanding online fictional space that communicates with, yet also transcends, the physical exhibition space in Venice.
Bettina Hutschek is a visual artist, filmmaker and curator who lives and works between Malta and Berlin. Raphael Vella is an artist, curator and educator based in Malta. Both have extensive curatorial and artistic experience and have exhibited their work internationally. 
The international call for the engagement of a curator/curatorial team to curate the Malta Pavilion at the 57th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia 2017 was published by Arts Council Malta, in its capacity as Pavilion Commissioner, in collaboration with MUŻA (Malta’s National Museum of Fine Arts, Heritage Malta), under the auspices of the Ministry of Justice, Culture and Local Government.
A total of 22 applications were received in response to the open call; of these, 14 were deemed eligible. All the eligible projects were given the opportunity to pitch in front of the jury committee.
The winning project was unanimously selected by the jury committee, which included a mix of high profile international names and local expertise on the culture sector. The Jury Committee chaired by Albert Marshall, Arts Council Malta chair, was made up of the following members:
  • Fulya Erdemci, an international curator and writer based in Istanbul
  • Alfredo Cramerotti, director of MOSTYN Visual Arts Centre, Wales
  • Vince Briffa, artist and researcher, Head of Department of Digital Arts at the University of Malta
  • Alexander Debono, senior curator, National Museum of Fine Arts and Project Lead for MUŻA.
“I am delighted that Raphael Vella and Bettina Hutschek have been selected to curate Malta’s Pavilion at the Biennale Arte 2017,” said Arts Council Malta chair Albert Marshall. “Their exploration of a concept related to identity promises to be relevant to both local and international audiences. Their project will also involve collaborations with other artists, ensuring that the Biennale also serves as a means to an end.”
In their first comments to the media after the announcement of the result, the two artist-curators stated they were honoured to be appointed curators with the proposal of Homo Melitensis. “It is not simply an exhibition about various elements of Maltese identity. It is also about the presentation of these elements in various social and international contexts; in other words, it seeks to show how cultural traditions are presented in public manifestations and internalised by a public. Given the self-critical as well as creative function, the role of the artist-as-curator as an agent of deconstruction of canons, traditions and the actual processes of public presentation is central to the proposed Malta Pavilion.”
Next year’s Malta Pavilion will see Malta officially returning to the Biennale di Venezia after an absence of 17 years. It has so far participated with a special exhibition of Maltese Artists in 1958 and a National Pavilion in 1999.
Malta’s Pavilion at the Biennale di Venezia is one of the 70 actions which is being implemented as part of Strategy2020, Arts Council Malta’s five-year strategy for the cultural and creative sectors. It also formed part of government’s electoral programme.
The declared aim of the Malta Pavilion is to offer a platform through which Maltese contemporary artistic practices understood within the broadest sense of the term can be exposed, contextualised and presented to an international audience.
The Maltese Pavilion will also form part of the Cultural programme of the Maltese Presidency of the Council of the European Union in 2017. The project will also bridge with the contemporary art programme of Valletta as European Capital of Culture in 2018.
ARTIST CURATORS’ BIONOTES
Bettina Hutschek is a visual artist, filmmaker and curator who lives and works between Malta and Berlin. After studying Art History and Philosophy (BA) in Florence and Augsburg, she received her MA from Universität der Künste (UdK) Berlin and her MFA in Fine Arts from HGB Leipzig. She trained and worked in Art Mediation and spent one year as Visiting Scholar at the Department of Performance Studies at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Bettina’s work has been exhibited internationally; since 2013, she is also founder and director of FRAGMENTA Malta, a project to organize pop-up exhibitions in the public space of the Maltese islands.
Raphael Vella is an artist, curator and educator based in Malta. He received his PhD in Fine Arts at the University of the Arts London and is an academic at the University of Malta, where he lectures in art education, practice and theory. He has exhibited his work internationally and has been active as curator since 2002, working with emerging and established artists in institutional as well as alternative settings both locally and internationally. He has initiated several artistic and educational projects, including the Valletta International Visual Arts festival (VIVA), the Curatorial School organised by Valletta 2018 and Divergent Thinkers organised by the youth agency Aġenzija Żgħażagħ. 

Cody Choi per la Corea



Il Artasiapacific sito  annuncia la selezione di Cody Choi per il padiglione della Corea 

Seoul-based curator Daehyung Lee, notable for having organized the 2009 and 2010 iterations of the “Korean Eye” exhibition series (2009–12) at London’s Saatchi Gallery, has been appointed curator of the Korean Pavilion for the 2017 Venice Biennale. The Korean Pavilion, which has mainly featured presentations of solo artists in recent years, will comprise a group exhibition featuring Lee Wan, Cody Choi and Mr. K—two artists and a journalist, respectively—for its 2017 edition.
In an email to ArtAsiaPacific, Lee described his curatorial concept for the Pavilion as “presenting semi-fictive worlds that reinvent reality and engage our imagination, trigger our empathy, and pique our curiosity through understated means that overall emphasize our human nature and psychological complexity.”
For the exhibition, Lee Wan will create an installation that retells the life of Mr. K, an anonymous journalist who lived through nearly a century of Korea’s tumultuous modern history. As Daehyung Lee explains, using Mr. K’s biography and personal archive of roughly 1,400 photographs, Lee Wan will “explore Korea’s national history, cultural specificity and identity in a manner that is not prescriptive or propagandistic but inquisitive and open-ended,” and also push viewers to “question the universal mechanisms and symbolic strategies by which individuals construct personal meaning as well as national narratives.” Incidentally, the true identity of Mr. K—other than that he was an amateur journalist from Korea—is being kept under wraps until later this year....

Black British Diaspora Pavilion

Il sito A-n segnala un progetto parallelo che si svolgerà durante la prossima Biennale



The International Curators Forum (ICF), in partnership with University of the Arts London, is to showcase work by ten Black British artists at the 2017 Venice Biennale following a major award from Arts Council England’s International Showcasing funding programme.
Thanks to ACE funding of £300,000, the London-based organisation’s project, Tactical Interventions: Curating a Black British Diaspora Pavilion, is to go ahead at next year’s biennale.
The pavilion aims to heighten the visibility of BAME artists working in England, with the selected artists participating in a programme that will include mentoring, bursaries, and working with international curators.
David A. Bailey MBE, director of ICF, said: “In a climate where difference is currently criticized and threatened, this project not only celebrates English/UK diversity, but foregrounds it at the world’s most prestigious event for the visual arts, the Venice Biennale.”
The project will build on the success of the ICF’s 2015 programme which involved taking a group of young artists and curators to the 56th Venice Biennale.
A total of £1.56 million will be awarded to nine organisations through the ACE’s International Showcasing fund, with other successful applicants including Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Nofit State Community Circus Ltd and NTS LIVE LTD....

lunedì 1 agosto 2016

Tehching Hsieh per Taiwan

L'artista Tehching Hsieh è stato selezionato per il padiglione di Taiwan 




Info da Artradar 

The influential Taiwanese artist will represent his country at the 57th edition of the Biennale.

The Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM) announced on 28 July 2016 that Tehching Hsieh will be representing Taiwan with an exhibition to be curated by Adrian Heathfield at the 57th International Art Exhibition, Venice Biennale 2017.
The recent announcement consolidates Taiwan’s decade-long involvement in the most influential international biennial art event. Taiwan’s representation at the Venice Biennale began in 1995 and has been a collateral event since 2003, taking place at the Palazzo delle Prigioni right off Piazza San Marco.
In 2017, Taiwan will return with the presentation of one of the country’s most influential contemporary artists – pioneer of durational performances Tehching Hsieh. The solo exhibition will be curated by British writer, curator and Professor of Performance and Visual Culture at London’s Roehampton University Adrian Heathfield, the author of Out of Now (2015) – a monograph on Tehching Hsieh. Quoted in the press release, the curator states:...

Dirk Braeckman per il Belgio



Per il Padiglione del Belgio è stato selezionato l’artista Dirk Braeckman, seguito dalla curatrice Eva Wittock.

Dal sito della galleria Rose 


Dirk Braeckman has been selected to represent Belgium for the forthcoming Venice Biennale in 2017.
The 57th Venice Biennale of Visual Arts will take place from 13 May until 26 November 2017. Belgium has in the Giardini, the center of the Biennial, a country pavilion that the Flemish Community can fill in a rotation with the French Community.

Dirk Braeckman was selected by a jury from a shortlist of five. The jury assessed the five proposals following an oral presentation of the artists and curators. All five proposals made a very strong impression despite they started from a very different artistic point of view.

Dirk Braeckman and curator Eva Wittocx convinced the jury with a strong personal story, in which the medium of photography is approached in a unique way. The experiment of Dirk Braeckman the process of photography and the techniques of darkroom give his pictures an exceptional pictorial quality. The work is very authentic and with a high sensuality. The arrangement in the Belgian pavilion, which lends itself perfectly for this strengthens the whole.