(In Search of the Lost Unity)
Perspectives of Transformation

Guadalupe Aldrete
Sofia Cruz Rocha
Paula Flores

Curated by Marcello Farabegoli and Ute Burkhardt-Bodenwinkler (fAN)

OPENING: TUESDAY, 21 SEPTEMBER, 2021, 7:00 PM
DURATION: SEPTEMBER 22 – OCTOBER 5, 2021

IN SEARCH OF THE LOST UNITYART TALKS IN THE FRAME OF THE ITINERANT GROUP SHOW

GUADELUPE ALDRETE, SOFIA CRUZ ROCHA, PAULA FLORESCURATED BY MARCELLO FARABEGOLI AND UTE BURKHARDT-BODENWINKLER

14 SEPTEMBER 2021, 7 PMTALK BETWEEN THE AUSTRIAN CURATOR FELICITAS THUN-HOHENSTEIN AND THE ARTISTS

21 SEPTEMBER 2021, 4 PMTALK BETWEEN THE MEXICAN CURATOR JOSÉ MANUEL SPRINGER AND THE ARTISTS

MEXICAN CULTURAL INSTITUTE – TÜRKENSTRASSE 15, 1090 VIENN

This project attempts to make structures of the imaginary perceptible and visible. The aim is to irritate and overcome artistic boundaries that have existed up to now. In a constructivist laboratory situation, the prototypical dialectic between art as part of life – art in to life – is suspended. Here we follow the debate that has been going on in cultural theory in recent years, is culture to be understood as a text or rather as a performance and find that art is matter that forces us to fall silent for a moment, to stop thinking and merely try to feel and observe.
Another aspect of this project is the focus on the motif of contact, the multiple transcultural moments of exchange, the interrelationships and the exploration of this multifaceted contact is able to dissolve the dichotomous structures inscribed in Global Art History, to make visible possibilities of transformation. Only contact and often conflicting confrontations with others embody phases of change. Artistically and politically interested encounters of at least three female actors in a field of tension between cooperation and confrontation seem to offer a potential for overcoming the dichotomy of Western and non-European (art) histories. So what are the motives and conditions that enable certain female actors to think or do something specific at a certain point in time and thus transcend the spaces of thought and action assigned to their subject positions? This project by the artists Paula Flores, Guadalupe Aldrete and Sofia Cruz Rocha makes it possible to make aesthetic, ideological and strategic fault lines visible, even to perceive them with pleasure. The clash of such different positions constitutes a coherent and linear practice in our project “Perspectives of Transformation”.
We also mean strategies of resistance, not originating from a language, thus not in the service of an idea and not illustrating it, but nevertheless inseparable from an idea.

“Perspectives of transformation” consists of three related exhibitions (the Encounter (-A-) and three Salons (-B-), where invited guests will discuss the artists’ approaches.

Text by Ute Burkhardt-Bodenwinkler