Notes from the future: a crossbreed laborer’s diary

Artists: Adriana Minoliti, Fernando Palma, Gala Porras-Kim, Julien Creuzet, Ximena Garrido-Lecca

Curated by Dorothée Dupuis

Notes from the future: a crossbreed laborer’s diary brings together artists who use forms from documents, anthropology and science fiction, as so many imaginary territories to be cannibalized within visual production; challenging notions of culture, origin and belonging. The exhibition invokes the future in order to compose an image of present-day society. Imagination, caricature and dystopia are used to create new representations within pictorial, filmic, sculptural and performative spaces, imbued within other areas of knowledge from recent and contemporary history. The space of art is dealt like a parallel dimension where different realities are to be seen, felt and grasped, a place of social experimentation which establishes a communication between periods and utopias.

Julien Creuzet (Blanc-Mesnil, 1986) uses the notion of “archipelagic” thinking developed by Edouard Glissant as the aesthetic and conceptual driving force of a praxis aimed at re-instating, through poetry, the fragmented identities of a world invariably tainted by colonial feudality—at times literally, as in his large paintings made with Bordeaux mixture. Ximena Garrido-Lecca (Lima, 1980) straightforwardly explores the different ways of living in any territory in the world, and captures the visual and narrative elements by means of video and sculpture. Here, a totemic installation confronts the ancient Quechua cosmogonies with continental scientific appetites. Adriana Minoliti (Buenos Aires, 1980) uses the space of painting and sculpture as an imaginary refuge for hybrid creatures, half-figures and half-animals, prolonging in a cyborg manner the modernist domesticating dream. Around prints produced for the exhibition, frolic toys and doll’s houses mock their own sexist clichés. Fernando Palma (Milpa Alta, 1963) makes mecatronic sculptures conjuring up the indigenous cosmogonies from which he originates, as well as the dramatic ecological situation of his native village of Milpa Alta, swallowed up over the past few decades by the monstrous expansion of Mexico City. A new work produced for the show literally evokes other similar struggles being waged by other activists closer to us. Lastly, the visual language of Gala Porras-Kim (Bogotá, 1984) draws inspiration from the world of archaeology and museography to create collections of half-real, half-imaginary artefacts, mischievously—and legally—defying established cultural pigeon-holes.

Dorothée Dupuis (Paris, 1980) is an independent curator, art critic and publisher based in Mexico City. She is director and founder of Terremoto.mx, a magazine about contemporary art in the Americas, and co-director of the feminist publication Petunia. Her curatorial and writing practice seeks to question, expose, and challenge existing power structures within the visual arts.
 

Publication
The show is accompanied by an online publication, The Late Shift, running through February 2017. Bilingual in French and English, it serves as a preview for the catalogue of the exhibition to be released during the spring of 2017.
 

The FRAC International Studios
One of the first programs of the kind in France, the Frac des Pays de la Loire organizes the International Studio Program, since 1984. Every year, during two months, a handful of artists—sometimes selected by a guest curator—are invited to produce on site and show the result of their work in an exhibition. The Frac develops through this exceptional experimental program a strong incentive towards artistic production, contributing to enrich its collection in an original manner. A place for research and exchange, the International Studio Program is meant as a laboratory for action and reaction.