Opening November 12th 7pm
Visits: Tuesday to Sunday from 1pm to 8pm
Kiosk is a site-specific installation inspired by the surveillance architectures of the city of Montevideo. Swedish artist Peter Johansson stages the roles and functions of security booths. Usually occupied by security officers, they represent spaces for vigilance and security in the collective imagination. By restyling their structure and stripping them of their distinctive characteristics, Johansson highlights their likeness to other urban elements with different uses and purposes, such as food trucks and food kiosks, and prompts reflection on the symbolic value of the booths, the concept of prefabrication, and the standardisation of experiences. For the installation in the gardens of the MNAV, the artist modifies the original appearance of the booths to create a mysterious, eerie construction that harks back to no easily recognisable model; on the contrary, it inspires bewilderment and raises questions as to the ultimate role of these structures.
Sand chooses which stories to tell and which secrets to hide, claims Muhannad Shono. Its perpetual movement establishes alternating cycles of revelations and oblivion capable of reconfiguring futures and erasing pasts. Shono's recurrent choice of material is sand as a condensation of time and space. The work presents its poetic power as a bearer of narratives that appear to shed light on some aspects of the present while blurring others. A concept of fluid time shapes his creative project, insofar as a persistent question about the past and its various traces in the present lies in each of his works. The sand that has come to visit me will eventually fold itself over my house again. This project especially created by Shono for BIENALSUR at the MNAV takes his childhood memories as a starting point. The plans of what used to be his house represent the guiding principle of this work: occupying the voids, turning each two-dimensional space into a volume, exploring with them - through their presence, their multiple combinations, their erosion, and the traces they leave behind - the emerging narratives are all part of his enquiries. These exercises contribute to the formulation of a new idea of home that takes root and is built to be remodelled, refurbished and duly revised. Sometimes," the artist adds, "we need to distort and erode the past, to rid our concepts of the structures and moulds that surround them, to unlearn the narratives so as to recreate our own stories and realities. Shono's proposal is the trigger for this brief selection of works from the MNAV collection. We hope that the coexistence of these images can offer other narratives, like the sand that covers and reveals diverse landscapes.
Diana B. Wechsler
The BIENALSUR 2021 presentation of Peter Johansson is supported by the Nordisk Kultur Fond (NKF) and Danish Arts Foundation.
