Good morning, we welcome you to Artissima 2024! This is the audio guide project and you’re listening to track no.5, titled Nice to Meet You, dedicated to artists who have developed new languages and reflections through travel, migration and research. An opportunity to reflect on the fruitful value of encounters between cultures. 2024 is the perfect year for this discussion, because the 60th Venice Biennale is titled Foreigners Everywhere. Curated by Adriano Pedrosa, the artistic director of MASP in São Paulo, it’s an unprecedented project, giving new attention to figures who considered the crossing of borders a research practice. In Pedrosa’s words, ‘wherever we go, we will always be foreigners’: that’s why we need to celebrate differences in terms of identity, citizenship, race, gender, sexual orientation, and freedom. The history of art has always been characterized by traveling artists, who have enriched their own production by living through different cities, countries, sometimes even different continents. Painter Paul Gauguin, at the end of the 19th century, didn’t feel appreciated by the French society anymore, thus decided to move to Tahiti: that’s the place where he produced sun-filled paintings, exotic visions that would make him become culturally immortal. Henri Matisse, celebrated in these months by a major retrospective exhibition at Fondation Beyeler in Basel, also left France to explore Italy, Spain, Northern Africa, the United States and the South Pacific region, always searching for the best light. Nice To Meet You is a sound journey – a short yet intense one. It will allow us to discover the different sections of Artissima Fair in the company of globe-trotter artists, coming from all latitudes. Are you ready? This journey is about to start: nice to meet you, Artissima! These audio guides have been developed for Artissima by Arteco’s mediators. This track has been written and curated by Daniele Licata. We are ready to go! Pause the player and go to Galerie Urs Meile, located in the Back to the Future section, white corridor, booth 2, to begin our visit. Press play once you have arrived. I’ll be waiting for you!

We are in the Back to the Future section, at the booth of Galerie Urs Meile, a gallery located in Lucerne, Beijing, Zurich and Ardez. We present the work of Marion Baruch. Marion Baruch’s life and journeys seem to be made for movies. Born in 1929 in Timiśoara, western Romania, Baruch studied at the Academy of Fine Arts of Bucharest before moving, along with her mother, to Jerusalem, where she completed her studies. In 1954 she went to Rome, Italy was an amazing discovery: she decided to settle in Gallarate, a small town near Varese, where she currently lives and works. The production of this wonderful 95-years old creature is dynamic, just like an on the road trip. Her works reflect almost a hundred years of history, with their complexities but also their glimmers of possibilities. Baruch speaks Hungarian, Romanian, French, German and English, and the title of her works often reflect such knowledge. Fabric soon emerged as main protagonists: in 1970 Abito-Contenitore became her first important artwork, a soft textile architecture she completely wrapped in, to explore female subjectivity and search for a shelter. As she personally explained: ‘to me, textile is something alive, I feel its indescribable breath. Fabrics can reflect the history of humanity and the social dimension of work at the same time’. Through different styles and materials, the artist questions the dynamics of mass consumption production. In 1991 she founded NAME DIFFUSION, a brand that allowed her to organize collective and critical actions. The Back to the Future section presents the objects from her Untitled series, composed by wooden boxes containing an unspecified name made of 3D letters, and a neon sign presenting the company’s logo. This approach suggests that society is filled with brands, but sometimes forgets about the names, the emotions and the ideas of the men and women who work to produce mass consumption objects. The life of Marion Baruch would be a long, beautiful film, featuring many immortal quotes, like: ‘I was born old, but I became younger throughout my lifetime. Now I can finally say that I am young for real’. We have completed our first stage. Pause your player and head to Galería MPA, located in the Disegni - Drawing section, white corridor, booth 10. Press play once you have arrived. I’ll be waiting for you!

We are now in the Disegni - Drawings section, at the booth of Galería MPA, a gallery based in Madrid. We present the work of Johanna Calle. In his texts, Italian author and botanist Stefano Mancuso writes about the ‘intelligence of plants’: an ‘extended brain’ allowing trees to develop incredible skills, like – for instance – protecting themselves by orienting their own roots in the ground. That’s why humans, in Mancuso’s words, should stop ruining nature on the planet. Colombian artist Johanna Calle seems very close to these theories. Calle was born in Bogotà in 1965 and studied Visual Arts at the Universidad de Los Andes. In 1993 she earned her Master of Fine Arts from the Chelsea College of Art and Design in London. Perímetros is a series of drawings made with old notarial books, where the silhouettes of trees are obtained by typing the so-called Ley de Tierras, the land law. This regulation protects the rights of Colombian farmers forcibly expelled from the property, allowing them to reclaim it by simply enumerating the names of the trees they planted. Her rational, minimalist plant silhouettes express a powerful political message, denouncing the fragility of working communities and minorities. A work that reveals knowledge and empathy for a politically complex country, whose recent history has often been told in a fragmented way. For Calle this unique cross between drawing and typing is an attempt to understand reality. Typed words are incredibly close to each other, and the final pattern is almost impossible to read. However, legibility is something the artist is not really interested in, also because the Ley is written in a language that is strange to those who suffer. Here’s why, in Perímetros, trees are like battlefields that display Colombian social tensions. As Calle says: ‘the forest is a refuge for criminals and outlaws. Any attempt to regulate an immeasurable territory is useless, because impunity is the norm. My work is a way of exploring and understanding the complexities of human existence. Through my art, I aim to shed light on social issues and provoke thought and dialogue’. We have completed our second stage. Pause your player and head to Ellen de Bruijne PROJECTS, located in the Present Future section, black corridor, booth 5. Press play once you have arrived. I’ll be waiting for you!

We are now in the Present Future section, at the booth of Ellen de Bruijne PROJECTS, a gallery based in Amsterdam, to present the work of Simnikiwe Buhlungu. In 1990, American artist and philosopher Adrian Piper, known for her theories on topics such as politics and racial identity, theorized the concept of ‘indexical present’, which refers to the phenomenon of a sign indicating an object in the context in which it occurs. Experiencing the indexical present through ‘a confrontative art object’ wrests attention away, Piper writes, ‘from the abstract realm of theoretical obfuscation, and back to the reality of actual circumstances at the moment’. These ideas are close to Simnikiwe Buhlungu’s practice, an artist who observes reality to understand it better. Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1995, she recently moved to Amsterdam, in The Netherlands, where she currently works. Her work – encompassing texts, videos, installations and sound pieces – is a constellation of suspended moments, a compilation of social and historical narratives aimed at questioning the production of knowledge. In 2022 curator Cecilia Alemani selected her as the youngest artist exhibited at The Milk of Dreams, the 59th Venice Biennale. On that occasion, she presented an interactive sound installation composed by a theremin – an instrument which is not supposed to be touched during the execution – and electronic synthesizers. By interacting with the magnetic fields produced by the passage of visitors, the work played the voices of singers such as Miriam Makeba, an African jazz singer known for her political commitment against Apartheid. With the interaction of the audience, Buhlungu tried to shape dreams, suggesting that they are not abstract thoughts, but rather shared narrations. Simnikiwe Buhlungu belongs to the Born Free Generation, the people who were born in South Africa after Nelson Mandela’s government and the end of Apartheid. This democratic context led her to reconsider, among others, the art system: in a world where anybody can emerge on Instagram, institutions are not a guarantee of success for creatives. A much better conversation is trying to reflect upon new, less conventional methods to exhibit without relying on galleries or museums. We have completed our third stage. Pause your player and head to Galleria Tiziana Di Caro, located in the Main Section, light blue corridor, booth 8. Press play once you have arrived. I’ll be waiting for you!

We are now in the Main Section, at the booth of Galleria Tiziana Di Caro, a gallery based in Naples. We present the work of Shadi Harouni. “Reza Nik was a shoemaker in the Iranian city of Hamedan. A few days after the Revolution, he changed the name of his small shop to Mosadeqh, the name of the elected prime minister of Iran, deposed by a CIA coup d'état. He installed a neon sign with the name - four letters connected - that read MSDQ in Farsi. After a month, the new authorities ordered him to change the name. He had the first letter removed and now the shop was called Sedqh, which means truth. After a few years, the light of the S also went out. The new name of his shop was Deqh, which means death by heartbreak. He let this new title stand”. MOSADEGH is the title of a half-lit neon sign that Iranian artist Shadi Harouni – and Tiziana Di Caro Gallery – present in the Main Section of Artissima. The work is indicative of the artist’s interest in misunderstandings through language; also, the city of Turin has recently known about this work, since it was exhibited at MAO, the city’s Museum of Oriental Arts. Shadi Harouni was born in Hamedan in 1985, and she currently lives in New York, where she’s also Assistant Professor at the University. Her practice is about film, photography, site-specific interventions, and is rooted in the history of Iran. Her work is an attempt to tell a universal experience of loss, repression, challenge. The uncertain relationship between a post-revolution country and pictures, music, fashion and bodies is the starting point for her reflections. She often focuses on disregarded stories of dissent, especially in her ancestral Kurdistan, linking silent acts of personal resistance to global mass movements. A peculiar attention for spaces and locations leads her to set her photographs and films in cemeteries, mountain quarries, abandoned factories throughout Iranian Kurdistan: sites of remembrance, resistance, and despair. Her tenacious creatures and forgotten anecdotes reveal a possibility of the future: because, in the end, nothing is lost for those who got hope. We have completed our fourth stage. Pause your player and head to UNA, located in the orange corridor, booth 13. Press play once you have arrived. I’ll be waiting for you!

We are now in the Monologue/Dialogue section, at the booth of UNA, a gallery based in Piacenza, to present the work of Adji Dieye. Adji Dieye is a multidisciplinary artist who lives and works between Milan and Dakar. She was born in Milan in 1991, where she graduated in New Technologies for Arts. In the past years she traveled intensely between Italy and Senegal, making research on the influence of advertising language on African contemporary culture. One of her most known projects is Maggic Cube, a series of mixed media works inspired by the aesthetics of Maggi stock cubes, a popular food product also known for its aggressive advertising, with stereotypes taken from local culture. For her own work, Adji used the hunger-inducing reds and yellows of the brand’s visual identity, and combined them with references to masters such as Malick Sidibé, a Malian photographer who shaped the continent’s identity. More recently, Adji’s works – combining photography, pictorial elements and installation – are questioning the architecture of the national postcolonial identity, with precise focuses on archives and the public sphere. The starting point is the criticism of Asymmetric Parallelism, an architectural principle conceived by Léopold Sédar Senghor, the first president of Senegal. Adji views Asymmetric Parallelism not only as a form of architectural expression (even though, as an architectural principle, it was never truly defined) but also as a vehicle for self-representation. Adji explores the tension between the ideas that constitute the aesthetics of modernity and self-representation, reflecting on how buildings and public space have contributed, and still contribute today, to the formation of a collective and individual identity. We have completed our fifth and final stage: we hope you enjoyed it! If you want another perspective on the fair, go back to the InfoPoint or on the audio guides landing page, and select another podcast. Enjoy Artissima, and see you next year!