Participants:
Maricel Álvarez, Diego Bianchi, Celia Birbragher, Estrella de Diego, Valérie Duponchelle, Matías Duville, João Fernandes, Emilio García Wehbi. Anna Bella Geiger. Alfredo Ghierra, Marta Gili, Blake Gopnik, Ivan Grilo, Marlise Ilhesca, Aníbal Jozami, Guillermo Kuitca, Marco Maggi, Cildo Meireles, Daniel Merle, Óscar Muñoz, Agustín Pérez Rubio, Guillermo Navone, Alberto Rebaza, Reza, Patricia Rousseaux, Graciela Sacco, Matilde Sánchez, Giancarlo Scaglia, Graciela Speranza, Catalina Swinburn and Diana Wechsler.
FIRST DAY
Opening / Table 1
The transforming power of art in urban experiences
Art and urban experiences as a challenge to passers-by was the starting topic theme of the 4th Sur Global Meeting, featuring the participation of Uruguayan artist and performer Alfredo Ghierra, who presented the project “Ghierra Intendente”(Ghierra for Mayor), and the Argentinians Emilio García Wehbi and Maricel Alvarez, who spoke about their project Filoctetes in a panel discussion coordinated by Diana Wechsler.
“We are artists because we are able to capture and transform reality”, pointed out Ghierra in reference to the fake electoral campaign - a sort of performance - that brought together architects, designers and artists in the city of Montevideo to talk about the living conditions in that Uruguayan city, Ghierra’s birthplace.
“I wish to ironically express my gratitude to contemporary politics for its inability to draw up an agenda, to solve people’s problems and, above all, to ask the right questions. And asking the right questions is precisely what artists do”, said the artist.
Then, Emilio García Whebi and Maricel Alvarez expanded upon Filoctetes, an urban intervention project held in Buenos Aires, Vienna, Berlin and Krakow, which turns cities into a huge theatre set by placing a score of hyper realistic dummies in different spaces, arousing fear, indifference or bewilderment among passers-by.
Table 2
Guillermo Kuitka: “I don’t think I should bear the cross of a pictorial tradition”
“Painters often wish to pass from the plane to the three dimensions, from plane to volume. Sometimes such an illusion prompts our work, other times we deny it, while others, we just provoke it”, said the Argentine artist in a conversation with Graciela Speranza at the 4th Sur Global Meeting.
“I have always seen three-dimensional spaces with interest, indifference, fear, desire… a repertoire of feelings. But I don’t think I should bear the cross of a pictorial tradition”, added Kuitca, regarded as a leading figure in Argentine contemporary art.
The artist went over some of his most noteworthy periods, such as his collages, the theatrical architectonic floor plans, his famous mattresses and his curatorial work at the exhibition Les Habitants, organized by the Parisian Cartier Foundation on the occasion of its 30th anniversary, which was showcased at the CCK in Buenos Aires in October 2017.
Table 3
Valérie Duponchelle: “The web takes a work of art and reduces it drastically”
“It is dangerous to place an artwork out of its context. The web takes a work and abridges it drastically; it reduces it to a legend. It transforms it into a kind of bomb”, asserted French critic Valérie Duponchelle in the course of a discussion entitled “Art, criticism and the media”, which was part of the 4th Sur Global Meeting.
“An artist can be a victim of the tabloid law, which turns a thought into something banal. The banal leads to scandals; and scandals give rise to controversy. That’s why I think it’s necessary to move away and gain perspective”, added the critic of Le Figaro during the discussion, in which the topic of art promotion in the web inevitably came up, not only on account of its immediate nature, but also because of its lack of geographical boundaries.
“The web is essentially a corporate model. The world of culture has adopted the notion that quantity equals quality, that the more followers critics have, the more relevant their work is. And this numerical model is also affecting museums by subscribing to the idea that a large number of visitors to an exhibition is akin to success”, said American New York Times contributor Blake Gopnik.
This table, under the coordination of Brazilian journalist Marlise Ilhesca, also featured the participation of Patricia Rousseaux (Brazil, Editor of Arte Brasileiros), Celia Birbragher (Colombia, Director of Art Nexus) and Matilde Sánchez (Argentina, Editor-in chief of Ñ Magazine).
Table 4
Diego Bianchi: “A piece is rich when it confronts spectators with their own fantasies”
“An artist produces an object that generates discussion, that stirs a myriad of meanings and that needs to be completed by the spectator”, pointed out Argentine artist Diego Bianchi in a discussion aiming to reflect upon artistic practice, along with colleagues from other countries, at the end of the first day of the 4th Sur Global Meeting.
“I believe that a piece is rich when it confronts spectators with their own fantasies and visions. It is in that interaction that the piece is executed and becomes an artwork, not when I am working on it in my workshop, but when it meets the public”, added the artist, renowned for his installations suggesting contexts with distorted patterns.
“When working on an installation I feel as if I were a curator, establishing preposterous, complex, contradictory, immoral laws. I can create a mini society, in which everyday life situations go beyond the limits, and put them before our eyes in a hideous, shocking or ironic way”, he added.
In turn, Chilean artist Catalina Swinburn said that her work operates “on the shifting border established between cult and artistic practice”, through which she seeks to express “the cultural meanings inscribed on the female body”.
Matías Duville, from Argentina; Marco Maggi, from Uruguay; and Ivan Grilo, from Brazil also participated in this discussion, which was coordinated by the Spanish Agustín Pérez Rubio.
SECOND DAY
Table 1
Reza Deghatti: “Hundreds of times I thought ‘this is my last second on earth’
“When I travel to war zones I rarely photograph corpses or devastated areas since to me the most important photos are those of the survivors; I can see thousands of air raids in their eyes”, said Reza Deghatti, one of the most renowned photojournalists in the world, in his poignant presentation on the second day of the 4th Sur Global Meeting.
“Hundreds of times I have been in war situations in which I closed my eyes and thought ‘this is my last second on earth’, and a second later I opened my eyes to realize it wasn´t. Life is beautiful and I somehow wish to show the beauty of humanity”, pointed out the photographer, whose pictures have been on a score of covers of National Geographic Magazine, and who has captured the most exotic landscapes while travelling around the world.
The Iranian, whose work has appeared in over two thousand publications, went over his career including stories and details of some of his most stunning images captured in Afghanistan, Turkey, Beirut, Sarajevo, Africa, Mongolia, Algeria and also in the six months he spent on the border between Russia and China, with temperatures of minus 40 degrees Celsius.
“In the East we have this old storytelling tradition. Well, I do so with my camera”, he pointed out in a dialogue with Daniel Merle and Aníbal Jozami. The photojournalist has conducted photography workshops in the most diverse areas affected by armed conflicts, which he regards as a tool to capture the surrounding reality.
Table 2
Volatile images that slip from memory in the work of Oscar Muñoz and Graciela Sacco
The ephemeral, immateriality and the way images become volatile and slip from memory were some of the points of coincidence in the presentations of Colombian artist Oscar Muñoz and his Argentine peer Graciela Sacco in a dialogue with Marta Gili (Director of the Jeu de Paume) and Diana Wechsler (Deputy Director of BIENALSUR) during the 4th Sur Global Meeting.
“My work alludes to time and memory as significant elements and, naturally, to oblivion”, said the Colombian artist, whose work is permeated by the idea of “protography”, the moment prior to the materialization of an image, which includes portraits that evaporate, slip away or mutate.
“To me, the work with heliographies - a stage previous to contemporary photography – entails demarcating cities, setting a border within cities. One’s own space and the other’s space, the interaction between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ permeate my entire production”, asserted Graciela Sacco, as she reviewed some of her most iconic works, such as “Body to Body” and the street series “Mouthful”.
“I place my work in contemporaneity; it is about what is going on around me. I’m not indifferent to social issues. As far as I’m concerned, creating artworks is a way of thinking, of understanding what happens around me”, observed the artist, whose work – oftentimes of an ephemeral nature – is generally set on stones or recovered wood, “elements laden with memory and meaning”.
Table 3
A way of poetizing collapse, by Peruvian artist Giancarlo Scaglia
Peruvian artist Giancarlo Scaglia, who directs the Revolver project in Lima, went over his work, in which he reinterprets, from a singular perspective, the armed conflicts that took place in Peru in the 1980s and 1990s in the course of a dialogue with collectors Alberto Rebaza and Guillermo Navone, within the context of the 4th Sur Global Meeting.
The work of this young artist is based upon the former Frontón Prison, located on an island in the Lima Bay, where a mutiny resulted in the killing of hundreds of political prisoners in the mid-1980s.
“I conceive my work from the contemplation of disaster, with elements from the ruins, in an attempt to poetize collapse. I decided to use these execution walls full of bullet holes, like etching matrixes to turn them into constellations, into stellar maps”, said the artist as he showed images of his visits to the island that inspired his creations.
Table 4
Conceptual art from the perspective of the Brazilians Cildo Meireles and Ana Bella Geiger
The remarkable conceptual artists Cildo Meireles and Ana Bella Geiger reviewed the most significant moments of their careers through the various creative processes accounting for the role of the artist as a social player that creates critical meaning, in a dialogue that closed the 4th Sur Global Meeting.
“I don’t analyse, I don’t criticize, I’m a doer”, remarked Meireles during his conversation with the Portuguese João Fernandes, in which he showed pictures of the iconic Coca Cola project. It consisted in engraving information and critical opinions on the glass bottles and then returning them to circulation. The messages could only be read when the bottles were full.
“I chose obliterated information. I wished to create a system of efficient communication between the individual and the structure, as though a single individual was the flapping of the wings of a butterfly”, he observed with regard to the work that he conceived in 1970.
In turn, artist Anna Bella Geiger, whose works are included in collections such as those of the Moma, Pompidou and Tate Modern, spoke with Estrella de Diego about the incorporation of maps into her pieces as a key element – in diverse platforms and materialities – to reflect upon colonial policies, cultural stereotypes, exclusions and hegemonic discourses.