Tania Candiani & Luis Felipe Ortega
Possessing Nature
9 May–22 November 2015
Preview: 6–8 May
Mexican Pavilion
Arsenale
Venice
www.bellasartes.gob.mx
www.labiennalemx.org.mx
Curated by Karla Jasso
The National Institute of Fine Arts, INBA, is proud to announce the selected project for the Mexican Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2015, Possessing Nature, by artists Tania Candiani and Luis Felipe Ortega, curated by Karla Jasso.
The curatorial concept juxtaposes Mexico and Venice as “amphibious cities.” While one embraces the sea (“si sposa con il mare”), the other is dried out and its lakes are exhausted under the imprint of colonial sovereignty. Drawing a path that would enable a journey through the places that have hosted the Mexican Pavilion in Venice during the 21st century, the result is a trace that refers to the history of architecture and infrastructure, as well as its relation to political, economic, religious and military powers that have supported the Western Empire from its origins.
Possessing Nature is a single, site-specific installation, conceptualized collaboratively by artists Tania Candiani and Luis Felipe Ortega. The work not only integrates, but also discerns each of their artistic practices, while interweaving their research interests and aesthetic discourses with the curatorial concept and the discussion proposed by Okwui Enwezor for the 56th edition of the Art Biennale. The resulting work of the trace addresses modernizing technological remedies and their pervading effects.
Luis Felipe Ortega (b. 1966, Mexico City) graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy at the National Autonomous University, UNAM. From his early work he has traversed reflections and speculations concerning time, space and silence in continuous reference to philosophy and literature. He has ventured into various languages and media (video, actions, sculpture and drawing) as resources to approach the present. Selected exhibitions include (notes for the inclusion of silence), Marso Gallery, Mexico City (2013); God Only Knows Who the Audience Is: Performance, Video and Television Through the Lens of La Mamelle, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (2011); So It Is, Now Is Now, Laboratorio Arte Alameda, Mexico City (2010); IP Détorunement. Les rendezvous du Forum, Series Voir/Revoir: 2, Centre d’Art Pompidou, Paris (2010); 4th Prague Biennial, Karlin Salon, Thamova (2009); La era de la discrepancia, MALBA, Buenos Aires/Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo (2008); Before the Horizon, MAAC, Brussels (2006); After the Act, MUMOK Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna (2005) and Gwangiu Biennale, Korea (2002).
Tania Candiani (b. 1974, Mexico City) is interested in strategies and practices of translation between linguistic, visual and phonic systems where there is a continuous yearning for the obsolete that conveys the discursive content of artifacts. She regularly integrates interdisciplinary collaborations in her work to obtain poetic intersections of language, the materiality of sound and the history of science. Selected exhibitions include Five Variations of Phonic Circumstances and a Pause, Laboratorio Arte Alameda, Mexico City (2012) & KIBLA Festival, Slovenia (2014); The Future of Fashion is Now, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2014); Serendipia, Artium, Centro Museo Vasco de Arte Contemporáneo, Vitoria-Gasteiz (2013); Prix Ars Electronica Distinction Award for Hybrid Arts (2013); Sonorama: Hi-Fi to Mp3, Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City (2013); XI Bienal de Cuenca, Museo de Arte Moderno (2011); Espectrografías. Memorias e Historia, MUAC Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City (2010); XI Cairo Bienial, Palace of Arts (2008). Candiani is a Guggenheim Fellowship Recipient (2011).
Karla Jasso (b. 1976, Guadalajara, Jalisco) holds a PhD in Art History from the Faculty of Philosophy at the National Autonomous University, UNAM. For over 15 years her work has explored the history of technology, the language of new media and art. She has taught contemporary art at Universidad Iberoamericana and was chief curator at Laboratorio Arte Alameda INBA. She currently conducts research on the archeology of science and globalization in Latin America.
Press contact: 56bienalmx [at] gmail.com
