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“[Heterotopia] is a sort of simultaneously mythic and real contestation of the space in which we live.”

- Michel Foucault, Des Espace Autres (Of Other Spaces)

 

 

From 17 January through 2 February 2020, Where is Where?: Weaving Heterotopias, curated by Andrea Pastore, Reem Marji, Siddhi Shailendra and Yunmi Cho of Curatorial Practice Masters at IED Instituto Europeo di Design, Venezia, will be on view at SPARC* Spazio Arte Contemporanea, Venezia. Reflecting on the idea of Heterotopia proposed in his 1967 essay 'Des Espaces Autres' by the French philosopher Michel Foucault that talks about spaces that are linked to the existing but are still distinct from them. The exhibition will present multiple narratives mirroring the digital, personal, social and past spaces.

The exhibition includes 10 works by 8 contemporary international artists: Areej Huniti & Eliza Goldox, Magda Magdi & Shannon Sea, Margherita Moscardini, Orijit Sen, Rourou Ye, Wagner Malta Tavares.

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Where is Where? will include drawings, posters, videos, installations, and archival materials such as photographs, prints, etc. In the four rooms of the exhibition space, the works of art will present themselves as territories, either built or imagined, as worlds within worlds. Within the space, the audience would encounter heterotopia, not into four separate concepts but a more integrated one, where each artwork is connected to the other through the thread of Heterotopia. The works in the exhibition, acting as heterotopias by themselves, gives the exhibition a more layered narrative. The exhibition will open with archival photographs and prints from the first Biennial of Sao Paulo in 1951 accompanied by some other archival prints demonstrating the concept of Heterotopia in different disciplines that we encounter unwittingly in our daily lives. The exhibition continues on the upper floor with a sound installation Invocations by artist Magda Magdi & Shannon Sea, an Egyptian artist based in Vienna and an American artist based in New York & Berlin; Digital poster prints by Indian artist Orijit Sen; Ink on Paper drawings by Italian Artist Margherita Moscardini; an installation by Brazilian artist Wagner Malta Tavares, L’amore; further in the exhibition is the Video and VR installation Reimagining Luna by artist duo Eliza Goldox & Areej Huniti from Germany and Jordon respectively; and a video performance The Tangible Hallucination of Rourou in the Day-Time by New-York based Chinese artist Rourou Ye.

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Where is Where?: Weaving Heterotopias will be accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue with a central text written by the Curatorial Team, Andrea Pastore, Reem Marji, Siddhi Shailendra, and Yunmi Cho, reflecting on the idea of space with reference to the works on display within the exhibition.

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The exhibition has been made possible with the collaboration of IED Istituto Europeo di Design and VeniceArtFactory.