Embodied Echoes: Stories of the Foreign Soul
April 17–June 29, 2024
On the occasion of the 60th Venice Art Biennale, Piero Atchugarry Gallery is pleased to present Embodied Echoes: Stories of Foreign Soul, a duo show featuring the powerful and interconnected works of internationally acclaimed artists mounir fatmi (b.1970) and Dagoberto Rodríguez (b.1969).
As artists leaving in exile, both have personally experienced the raw reality of the migrant condition. This perspective has nourished a sense of belonging to the global horde of emigrants, a community which constitutes the world’s fifth-largest population. But these experiences also deeply influence the artistic production of both artists: it nurtures in fatmi a dedication to dissecting otherness and identity as recurring themes, and in Rodriguez an obsessive interest in the geometry of refugee displacements.
The Cuban born, Madrid-based multidisciplinary artist Dagoberto Rodríguez unveils a new video piece titled Clessidra, shot in Havana in August of this past year. This work poignantly addresses the tensions associated with human displacement and borders. Rodríguez also presents an ongoing series about Refugee Camps where he translates several of the world’s largest refugee camps such as Zaatari or Dadaab into geometrical abstraction, inviting viewers to reflect more deeply on the permanent tragedy of those transitional cities.
Presented in tandem is the work of the Moroccan conceptual artist, mounir fatmi. A selection of several works fundamental to understanding the depth of the artist’s practice is showcased here. The Blinding Light, a grand photograph inspired by Italian painter and early Renaissance Master Fra Angelico’s (1395–1455) miraculous scene, questions notions of race, hybridization, orientalism, and identity. The text-based sculpture Coma Manifesto utilizes an inscription from fatmi’s manifesto to engage with themes recurrent not only in his oeuvre, but in his personal history, such as reciprocal cultural and linguistic thinking, social dynamics, and the perception of others.
This fusion of historical remnants and contemporary introspection echoes the psychological and physical issues involving origin and its nuances. Together fatmi and Rodriguez question concepts of belonging and otherness, shedding light on their own immigrant stories. By the very existence of their works in unison filling the exhibition space, the presentation unfolds in such a way that it becomes a celebration of the foreign, the distant, the outsider, and the indigenous through the lens of these two remarkable artists.
