The human condition | Artissima 2023

ARTWORKS

Adrián Balseca

The Skin of Labour, 2016

In his work Adrián Balseca (Quito, Ecuador, 1989) approaches specific questions on the Ecuadorian context and the country’s recent history, often pointing to similarities with other places on the Latin American continent and in the Global South. In particular, in recent years the artist has focused with great attention on dynamics of extraction, depleting the soil in the forest or other ecosystems, and causing devastating ecological impact.
The Skin of Labour was shot on a rubber plantation in Ecuadorian Amazon, a scenario of merciless exploitation of nature and workers, frequently kept in conditions of slavery for entire decades. Today, the politics of extraction have shifted from rubber to oil, from manual botanical harvesting to extraction of fossil fuels by machines. The video underscores the gap between the Amazon seen in ideal terms as an idyllic natural context, and the human impulse to conquer and exploit this territory.

Julian Charrière

Ever Since We Crawled Out, 2018

At the crossroads of performance, sculpture and photography, the works of Julian Charrière (Morges, Switzerland, 1987) are often the result of long field research in extreme or transitional contexts, such as volcanos, glaciers and radioactive sites. Working with scientists, engineers, art historians or philosophers, the artist investigates and dismantles the cultural traditions that often structure the way in which the so-called natural world is perceived and represented.
The work Ever Since We Crawled Out points to the fragility of the resources of the planet, making their finite condition almost tangible. Using black and white footage from cinema archives, in a monotonous, anguishing and seamless repetition, the work shows us the cutting of countless trees. The sound of breaking wood as the trunks fall to the ground is a cry of suffering that prompts us to reflect on the responsibilities we all share in the process of devastation of nature.

Elena Mazzi

Pirolisi solare, 2017

The gaze of Elena Mazzi (Reggio Emilia, Italy, 1984) often watches how the environment is modified by human presence and activity. With an almost anthropological approach, she investigates and documents an identity that is both personal and collective, related to a specific territory and giving rise to different forms of exchange and transformation.
Pirolisi solare, in particular, takes its cue from scientific research on renewable energy sources. Starting from an installation of mirrors that was the main feature of a previous work (Reflecting Venice, 2012-2014), this piece centres on the material grain of the film that fixes the light and casts it on a heap of straw, transforming it into biomass, an energy resource for the future. Timely scientific research that links back to the experiments of Archimedes, to utilize energy sources that are accessible to all.

Joan Jonas

Stream or River Flight or Pattern (detail), 2016-17

Since the 1960s the work of Joan Jonas (New York, United States, 1936) has ranged from performance to video to drawing, with an approach that is often ritualistic and almost mystical, in which she interacts with animals and plants. In her videos, where time frequently expands, is compressed or multiplied through overlaid images, the artist does not make use of any particularly sophisticated technology, instead allowing the viewers to perceive her gesture and her presence. Hers is not, however, an autobiographical work, but the creation of an almost dreamy setting, in which the characters effortlessly pass from one side of reality to the other.
Stream or River Flight or Pattern (detail) is part of an installation having the same title, composed of this video and two others, a series of kites, and large drawings of birds. Flight and birds in particular are the main subjects of the installation, whose video materials were shot in 2016 in Venice, Singapore and Vietnam.

Seba Calfuqueo

TRAY TRAY KO, 2022

Through performance, video, sculpture and drawing, Seba Calfuqueo (Santiago, Chile, 1991) comes to terms in her work with questions of gender and race, local and global cultural debates, and urgent social and ecological problems. As the artist has explained, the entirety of the work personally and symbolic constitutes, for the Mapuche native community, a way to “reappropriate a history and a place that have been taken from us over history”.
The true protagonist of TRAY TRAY KO is trayenko, the waterfall towards which the artist is heading in her action, a sacred place where many of the rituals of the Mapuche people take place, due to the presence of water and the rich supply of lawen, medicinal plants that grow on the edges of the pools that form spontaneously below the trayenko. Wearing a long blue cloak that unfolds behind her like a second river, the artist reasserts the inseparable fusion between her body and – by extension – the collective body of the Mapuche community and the territory.

Tamara Henderson

Accent Grave on Ananas, 2013

The poetic universe of Tamara Henderson (New Brunswick, Canada, 1982) is unmistakable. Through films, sculptures, installations and paintings, the artist transports us into a dreamy, surreal and at the same time coherent context, as can happen sometimes in dreams. Her work can be said to link back, in this sense, to the historical avant-gardes of the early 20th century and the lysergic and performative experimentation of the 1960s, but also to the shamanic practices of the native American peoples and others from different parts of the world.
The human figure is missing from most of Henderson’s works, which nevertheless offer a possibility of reconnection with the body, or more precisely with the idea of what the body itself should or could be. Inanimate objects or even a fruit, as in Accent Grave on Ananas, can take the place of the human figure, transformed in the protagonists of dreamy, surrealistic or reflective adventures.

Ali Kazma

Safe, 2015

Ali Kazma (Istanbul, Turkey, 1971), explores the relations between visible and invisible aspects of reality, challenging the social organization and the value of human activity. Examining specific activities in a vast range of sectors (economic, industrial, scientific, medical, social, artistic), his research investigates spaces of social relevance, and the places of production intrinsic to industry and crafts.
Safe was shot in the Global Seed Vault, located in the Svalbard Islands, between Norway and the North Pole. This is the largest of over 1000 storage facilities of this type, which in various parts of the world conserve the seeds of plants to be used in case of catastrophe. The work underlines the importance of preserving agricultural biodiversity, and the increasingly urgent need to save plants (and clean water). The result is a distressing portrait of contemporary society, forced to take measures to prevent the effects of catastrophes of its own devising.

Shimabuku

Sculptures for Octopuses: Exploring for Their Favorite Colors - Aquarium in Kobe, 2019

The artistic research of Shimabuku (Kobe, Japan, 1969), which began in the 1990s, often focuses on apparently banal or naïve aspects of Japanese life and culture, or people the artist meets during his travels in Japan and abroad. His works, notwithstanding the media he utilizes case by case, are always full of poetry, lightness and inimitable irony.
Sculptures for Octopuses is one of a number of various works in which Shimabuku looks at the sea and its creatures, in this case by creating a series of sculptures for octopuses. The sculptures become a tool with which to try to understand what an octopus thinks, which pieces the animal likes best, and what are its favourite colours. As the artist writes, “on the vast bed of the ocean, can a small piece of glass connect a human being and an octopus?”.

Uriel Orlow

What Plants Were Called Before They Had a Name, 2015-2018

The research of Uriel Orlow (Zurich, Switzerland, 1973) stands out for a multidisciplinary approach that takes in video, photography, drawing and sound. Many of his works centre on probing analysis of specific places and micro-histories, merging different languages and narrative modes.
The sound work What Plants Were Called Before They Had a Name is a sort of oral herbarium. Different speakers pronounce the names of plants in native South African tongues like Khoekhoe, Northern Sotho, Sesotho, siSwati, Setswana, Xithsonga, Xhosa and isiZulu. The project began following the artist’s visit to the Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden in Cape Town, where the plants are catalogued only with their Latin names and their English translations, ignoring the traditional terms and knowledge of the native communities. What Plants Were Called Before They Had a Name recognizes, restores and pays tribute to this repressed knowledge, allowing the plants to "sing" in honour of their past, bringing a forgotten chapter back to perception and life.