Collective Individuals

ARTWORKS

Jonathas de Andrade

Voyeurístico, 2018

Anthropology, pedagogy, politics and morals are the main lines of research of Jonathas de Andrade (1982) to investigate the complexity of Brazilian society. The artist gathers and catalogues images and texts, which through memory reassemble a personal narrative in which the failure of the modernist utopia often becomes a concrete reality.
Shot with a mobile phone in the streets of Recife and São Paulo, Voyeurístico has been made in a historical moment in which the level of corruption and political tension in Brazil was very high. In the video, the artist asks strangers to open a wallet and reveal its contents in front of a video camera. Recording an apparently banal but eloquent gesture, De Andrade offers us an intimate look at the private life of citizens in the two cities, while at the same time protesting against the extreme social and economic disparities in his country.

Cinthia Marcelle & Tiago Mata Machado

Dívida [Trilogia do Capital] - Debt [Capital Trilogy], 2021

Cinthia Marcelle (1974) and the director Tiago Mata Machado (1973) have worked together since 2008. They have produced a series of videos that reflect on notions of conflict, order and chaos in contemporary society.
Their new trilogy, of which the work Debt [Capital Trilogy] is a part, investigates the mechanisms and strategies connected with capital. Debt [Capital Trilogy] concentrates on one of the central aspects of the capitalist economy, which crisis after crisis is a burgeoning presence in the public and private spheres: debt. This abstract concept is materialized in a tangible presence: a boulder impossible to climb, looming over humanity. The neoliberal society is thus reduced to a multitude of individuals, increasingly isolated and alienated, crushed by the weight of imposed desires and models.

Hiwa K

Pre-Image (Porto), 2014

The research of Hiwa K (1975) is marked by a strong collective and participatory dimension, in which the process of teaching and learning happens through everyday experience. The archive of references is often composed of personal stories and those of family and friends. The work Pre-Image documents a performance the artist has done in various cities, connected with the path of his childhood journey, when he fled from Iraqi Kurdistan and reached Europe on foot. Hiwa K balances a bar on his forehead, to which motorcycle rear-view mirrors are attached, providing partial and distorted reflections of the setting in which he walks. The artist’s steps are uncertain and precarious, seeking a stability that is impossible to find in his state of constant movement. The title Pre-Image refers to the difference between the way we imagine the places we want to reach and what those places are really like. His “pre-images” are therefore fragments of a path whose final destination is unknown, traces capable of poetically conveying the critical aspects of a condition of migration.

Adelita Husni-Bey

After the Finish Line, 2015

Adelita Husni-Bey (1985), an artist and expert in pedagogy, investigates political and social issues through anarcho-collectivist theories of education and experimental teaching practices. Her works often stem from collective processes such as workshops and role games, involving different communities of participants.
After the Finish Line is a work developed with a group of young injured athletes who went for treatment at the physical therapy clinic of the Oakland Children’s Hospital, San Francisco. The piece is the result of in-depth dialogue between the athletes and the artist, based on radical pedagogical practice whose aim is to bring out the deeper feelings connected with failure and the desire for success. Competition in sport takes on a wide symbolic value connected with the feverish pursuit of perfection in contemporary society, which pushes individuals to always go beyond their own limits.

Larry Achiampong

Beyond The Substrata, 2020

The research of Larry Achiampong (1984) utilizes film, photography, sound and visual archives and live performance to investigate concepts connected with class, gender, intercultural and digital identity. Through works that start from his personal experience and a collective dimension of his community, Achiampong offers multiple perspectives that reveal deeply rooted disparities in contemporary society.
Shot in an abandoned supermarket, the work Beyond The Substrata explores the political dimension of the black body and the subtle violence hidden inside the repressive structures of big retail. An act of counter-surveillance, mediated by choreographic movements performed by the dancer Kanika Skye-Carr. The artist chooses the supermarket as a space capable of conveying the intrinsic contradictions of the culture of consumption. A place for the sale of basic necessities, whose offerings and vast range of choices are actually an illusion, and often remain out of reach.

Yael Bartana

The Undertaker, 2019

Yael Bartana (1970) works with photography, installations and video, exploring themes like the sense of belonging to one’s native land, national identity and the role of collective memory in the construction of a country.
Shot in Philadelphia, the birthplace of American democracy, The Undertaker shows a procession headed by an enigmatic leader, which concludes with a ritual of burying arms. The work stems from the performance Bury Our Weapons, Not Our Bodies! where the artist involved war veterans and activists from various local communities. The choreography of deliberately slow, posed gestures takes its cue from the ceremonial spectacle in 1953 to commemorate the Holocaust by the Israeli composer Noa Eshkol (1924-2007). In the context of the heated debate on the second amendment of the Constitution of the United States, covering the right to bear arms, The Undertaker is an appeal against the culture of violence, urging us to think of our bodies as tools of hope and resistance.

Alice Dos Reis

Stan Rehearsal - Ensaio para Plataforma de Lançamento, 2020

The research of Alice Dos Reis (1995) often comprises science fiction imaginaries in which the artist reinterprets aspects of her biography and the contradictions of the present, simultaneously projecting them into a near future and a recognizable past.
Stan Rehearsal - Ensaio para Plataforma de Lançamento is a short film of speculative fiction, set on the day in which the first rocket is launched from the spaceport under discussion to be built on the island of Santa Maria in the Azores archipelago. Taking advantage of the launch event as a backdrop, a group of teenagers film each other dancing to Korean pop hits. In a short circuit of local and global dimensions, the work by Dos Reis suggests the conflict between a conscious participation of newer generations in the technological discoveries of the present, and their relationship with reality, constantly connected and mediated.