EXPO ‘Walking the Gray Area’ Galeria Emilia Cohen, Mexico – 15 April-15 Mai 2010
Walking the Gray Area : A dialog on global mobility, identities and contemporary jewellery
Walking the Gray Area will premiere at Galeria Emilia Cohen in Mexico City, within the frame of the Gray Area Symposium Mexico 2010.
Andrea Wagner Piece- Greener Grass on the Other Side 2010 – papier maché, silver, paint
Contemporary jewellery, with its exceptional ability to communicate and create associations directly connected to specific cultural and personal settings and backgrounds seems to be circumscribed to a rather westernized discourse. It has become necessary for contemporary jewellery-makers to rethink the ways they connect with others.
40 artists, from an uncertain total number of involved countries, take a walk on the gray area and explore, through the already ambiguous field of contemporary jewellery, issues related to global mobility, identity and territories in dispersion and the way they perceive and have been affected by this phenomena during their rambling around the world.
Walking the Gray Area is a collective, comissioned exhibition curated by Valeria Siemelink and Andrea Wagner, that bring together 20 Latin American and 20 European jewellery makers and artists who ocationally work with jewellery as a medium, into a dialogue about jewellery, global mobility, contemporary identities and its personal and/or collective implications.
The curators of Walking the Gray Area, selected each 20 artists from their respective continents: Latin America and Europe. The artists were individually selected based on their artistic excellence, technical abilities and creative response to various subjects. As a collective, the group was conformed based on the on the tensions between their discourses and practices, their varied and experimental approach in the use of materials and techniques and on the rich possibilities that lay on the exchange among them. There is, however, one thing that all the invited artists have in common : like the curators, they are or have all been migrants; born in one place, living, working or studying in another one.
The artists work in couples and were paired randomly: the names of the Latin American artists were written on a piece of paper, which was folded and placed in a bowl. The same was done with the names of the European artists. The curators had fun taking turns to pick a name from one bowl and pairing it with a name from the other bowl. 20 couples were formed and, for the last six months they carried out a dialogue through the pages of a weblog specially created for this purpose. The artists conducted their dialogues in ways they find interesting or relevant: exchanging conversations, stories, images and even materials. Besides their periodical postings in the blog, the artists exchanged letters and parcels through the post, organized Skype sessions, phoned and even meet in person. The weblog has allowed the artists to reach a diverse, distant and growing audience, having attracted over 10 thousand visitors from nearly 90 countries.
Through the exchange both artists and curators aimed to respond to a variety of questions: How do they respond to changing definitions of mobility, locality, globalism, migration? How do the changing conceptions of identities relate to their being and practice? How do they reconcile their roots with their routes? What kind of exchange can take place between artists from areas of the world where contemporary jewellery is perceived and dealt with in such different ways? How can they relate to and diverse, moving, fast changing audience?
Helena Biermann Angel- set of pendants ‘Sabor a Ti’ 2010 – glass vials, fruit seeds, quartz, cotton, wood box
Agnieszka KNAP- Necklace- The Grass is Not Greener on the Other Side of the Fence 2010- silver, copper, enamel
Alejandra Solar – piece 2010 – wood, print, cotton pendants
Carolina HORNAUER - necklace ‘el Coleccionista’ 2010 Hair, cotton, fresh water pearls, patina, steel, cooper, enamel, magnets, burnt wood, silver, stone
Peter HOOGEBOOM – pi 2010′ necklace- Ceramics, nylon, alpaca, gold leaf
Terhi Tolvanen- Cherry wood, paint, beads, gold, silver – brooch ‘Chenonceau’
Mirla Fernandes ‘Riv Anda Hit’ 2010 – latex, pigments
Valentina Rosenthal - Silver, wood, nails, glass, porcelain, bronz, mirror, enamel necklaces
Artists:
Miguel Luciano (puerto rico) & Leonor Hipolito (portugal), Ketli Tiitsar (estonia) & Chequita Nahar (surinam), Karin Seufert (germany) & María Constanza Ochoa (colombia), Célio Braga (brazil) & Gemma Draper (spain). Carla Castaigo (portugal) & Valentina Rosenthal (chile), Francisca Kweitel (argentina) & Nelli Tanner (finland), Maria Jose Fabrega (costa rica) & Agnieszka Knap (poland), Andrea Wagner (netherlands) & Carolina Hornauer (chile), Susanne Klemm (netherlands) & Samantha Fung (venezuela), Jorge Manilla (mexico) & Christoph Zellweger (switzerland), Luzia Vogt (switzerland) & Thelma Aviani (brazil), Terhi Tolvanen (finland) & Guigui Kohon (argentina), Helena Biermann Angel (colombia) & Hanna Hedman (sweden), Mia Maljojoki (germany) & Alejandra Solar (mexico), Mirla Fernandes (brazil) & Kajsa Lindberg (sweden), Dani Soter (brazil) & Sebastian Buescher (uk), Ineke Heerkens (netherlands) & Julieta Odio (costa rica), Walka Studio (chile) & Natalie Luder (switzerland), Eduardo Graue (mexico) & Peter Hoogeboom (netherlands), Jantje Fleischhut (netherlands) & Andres Fonseca (colombia).
Karin SEUFERT- Piece ’9 Brooches’ 2010- pvc, cotton, steel, silver
Gemma Draper – Electroformed Copper, Enamel and Wood – 2008
Galeria Emilia Cohen
Palmas 1320
Lomas – Mexico City (Mexico)
Tel : +52 55 5281 0009
Tel : +52 55 5281 0029
mail: info@otro-diseno.com
website: http://www.emiliacohen.com/
