Julia Rometti & Víctor Costales
Azul equivocation
October 10–November 25, 2013
L’appartement22
279 avenue Mohamed V
10 000 Rabat
Morocco
T +212 6 25 93 92 58
T+ 212 6 27 03 52 64
www.appartement22.com
www.radioapartment22.com
Curated by Natalia Valencia
Azul Jacinto Marino. When I pronounce this name it comes alive in multiple forms. The equivocation could lie in its blurred gender. One might attempt to locate a geographical region for it, an ethnicity? A specific type of diet, perhaps. It is in fact an aquatic pigment, a hyacinth that thrives in the sea.
–M.G, 1944
In the new works commissioned by L’appartement 22, Julia Rometti & Víctor Costales pursue their long-term research on Anarquismo Mágico, a little-known transnational political movement, and one of its leading figures, Azul Jacinto Marino. Rometti & Costales interrogate the historical movement’s relevance within North Africa’s current botanical, mineral, and political context. These inquiries were sparked by recent subaquatic communications intercepted by the artists on the coast of Ecuador. The transcription of these messages into the Berber Tifinagh alphabet prompted a series of multi-divinatory events that took place in the Rif mountains in northern Morocco in September, as part of the “Expédition du bout du monde #11.”
In the meantime, Natalia Valencia and Rodrigo Ortiz Monasterio went in search of traces of the first seeds of spiritual inclination experienced by German artist and art historian Mathias Goeritz, during his stay in Tangier and Tétouan in the early 1940s. In the unearthed correspondence between Goeritz’s wife, Marianne Gast, and Azul Jacinto Marino, the researchers found evidence of the influence exerted by Moroccan folk aesthetics in what would later become Goeritz’s theory of “Emotional Architecture.” This was crystallized in the construction of Museo Experimental El Eco in Mexico City in 1953.
Following Goeritz’s and Marino’s early reflections on spiritual anarchism, Rometti & Costales’ perspectivist endeavours reach out for the sensibility contained in Moroccan amber, sand, azurite and other entities. In times of political unrest, Azul equivocation delves on the transformative qualities of botanical, mineral, and calligraphic insurrection.
L’appartement22 is an independent art space in Rabat founded in 2002 by Abdellah Karroum. The majority of L’appartement22′s projects are conceived specifically for the space. This space for debate interrogates recent art historical discourses and the contexts of their emergence. L’appartement22 has played a fundamental role in the development of independent spaces in Morocco for the past decade, as freedom of expression has become a rallying cry in a country where politics, religion, and economy are exclusive items of traditional and postcolonial power.
L’appartement22 expanded its formats in 2007 with the first art radio in Morocco, R22, and a workshop in Fez, Lot 219. In 2011, the exhibition space in Rabat invited the international members of the Curatorial Delegation to curate its programs. In 2013, The Rif Résidence was created to offer a space for artists, writers, and curators to develop projects in collaboration with the Rif community. A related exhibition program curated by Abdellah Karroum, Karima Boudou, and Natalia Valencia runs from September through November 2013.
Julia Rometti (b. 1975, France) & Victor Costales (b. 1974, Belarus) have worked together since 2007. Recent exhibitions include among others CRAC Alsace, Qalandia International – Jerusalem, Kunsthalle Zurich, and David Roberts Arts Foundation in London. This year they had two solo shows at Jousse Entreprise in Paris and at La Central in Bogota. They currently live and work in Paris and conduct long-term research projects in various Latin American countries.
Natalia Valencia has curated projects at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros in México City, Museo Quinta de Bolívar in Bogotá, and Proyectos Ultravioleta in Guatemala. As of recently, she worked as a research fellow at Centre Pompidou in Paris.
With the support of Almayuda Foundation (Barcelona)
