WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS
Curators: Clara Garavelli & Patricia Bossio
This exhibition brings together a series of works done by late Argentinian artist Graciela Sacco that explore the challenges faced by feelings of belonging and displacement. Throughout her extensive career as one of Argentina’s leading female artists, Sacco was concerned with the idea of unveiling the strategies at play in the spaces, images, and discourses that surround and define us. In order to do so, her artistic practice aimed to provoke an ‘interference’ in the semantic logic that gives them meaning and, thus, bring to the fore the other images, discourses, forms that question the veracity of the established order. From the most intangible to the utterly corporeal, Sacco’s works pose questions about the admissible tensions that hold us together as human beings.
For her, Art is always political and has the power to interject and question our very own existence. In this respect, this exhibition is an invitation to reflect, from the multiple pathways proposed by some of Sacco’s iconic works, on our own realities in constant motion. At a time of social and political unrest, in-between a global pandemic that changed social order and the haunting prospects of a world war, these works continue to be highly contemporary, inciting discussions on migration, our sense of belonging, the location of memory, and the anxious condition of waiting in fear of the unknown.
Graciela Sacco
Graciela Sacco (Argentina, 1956-2017) represented Argentina in several international Art biennials including Shanghai (2004), Venice (2001), La Habana (1997 and 2000), Mercosur (1997), Sao Paolo (1996). She has been awarded various distinctions and international accolades, including Artist of the year, by the Argentine Association of Art Critics (2001) and the Konex Award (2002 – 2012). She has published numerous books and has been featured in leading publications such as Bomb, Art Nexus, Art News, Le Monde and the New York Times. Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions in Argentina, UK, Germany, France, Switzerland, Israel, United States, Mexico, Brazil, Cuba, Peru. Today, her work forms part of prestigious national and international collections such as MAMBA (Museum of Modern Arts, Buenos Aires, Argentina); MACRO (Museum of Contemporary Art from Rosario, Argentina); Bronx Museum of New York (USA); Museum of Fine Arts Houston (USA); Museum of Arts Fort Lauderdale (USA); The Microsoft Art Collection (Washington USA).
Dr Clara Garavelli
Associate Professor at the University of Leicester (UK). Her research interests include the connections between cinema and fine arts, as well as the more experimental spheres of the moving image. Since 2018, she has been working with the collective, art ubicua (www.artubicua.com) invited by Patricia Bossio exploring core aesthetic and conceptual concerns that form the basis of the present exhibition.
Patricia Bossio
Patricia Bossio has worked as an artistic director and multidisciplinary performing arts curator for over 30 years, initially setting up a venue dedicated to chamber music in Buenos Aires, attracting leading international talent from Latin America, the ex Soviet Union and Europe. Throughout her multidisciplinary performance works ‘Urban Encounters’, Transtango and Art Ubicua she has invited and worked with leading world composers such as Tim Garland, Jorge Bosso, & Alexander Balanescu, and film makers including Henry Singer and Adam Finch, touring the UK and Europe supported by the Arts Council of England. Since joining Birkbeck College in 2002, Patricia has been researching and developing themes of interdisciplinary artistic collaborations, hybridity and migration alongside her artistic practice.
Ubicua Gallery is a new space dedicated to create conversations between artists across cultures and disciplines. Seeking interactions between visual artists, performers, musicians and academics, exploring within a new shared space of mutually informing practices, new possible forms and meanings yet to be unfolded.