Artistes

Through installation, writing, performance, and video, Nuria Güell rethinks the ethics practiced by the large institutions that govern our society and suggests alternative methodologies. She doesn’t shy away from difficult ethical issues regarding the exposure or use of vulnerable social positions in her work. Güell is rather direct in her recognition that the art work can only “…briefly alter the relation between dominators and those dominated, something akin to exercising a symbolic counterviolence on the public…” For MDE15 Güell is focusing on one of the most troubling issues she encountered during her research in Medellin: child prostitution – a contemporary form of slavery a substantial part of the flourishing sex tourist industry of…

“How did one make a film about toilets which wouldn’t instantly have people giggling? How did one make a film about toilets and gender – indeed why would one – if it was just going to state in some sense the obvious? The obvious being: women don’t have enough public toilets, and this says something about the perception of their presence in public spaces? The film began with some of these questions, which led me to a slightly simpler one: why did I want to make a film about toilets? Because, I realized, everyone pees, everyone shits and yet everyone…

Collins explores the construction of identity, particularly in relation to the video or television camera. His works often use music, television and pop culture to explore social situations and transcend definitions of language, social status and locality. Indirectly inspired by Jean Genet’s The Maids, Soy mi madre uses the soap-opera format to explore the intricate power dynamic that exists between un-equals. Shot in México City on 16mm film, Soy mi madre is a study in the aesthetics and politics of melodrama and its disruptive potential to address, within a highly predicated framework, some of the pains and dilemmas of the…

There are international estimates of around 190 million immigrants world wide. There are no reliable statistics about the number of immigrants that arrive in their new homes by way of human trafficking, but nevertheless human trafficking generates billions of dollars every year. It is a business that involves directly and indirectly all segments of society, and for that reason it is difficult to find concrete information about it. Water is a fundamental element in the work of Santiago Vélez. It is essential for life and it functions as both a limit and a vehicle. In the ecologicial sense the artist questions the relationship between human beings and this element. In the Northeast part…

Xhafa is known for works that could be described as “actions” or conceptual strategies which challenge cultural stereotypes, preconceived prejudices and institutional structures. Often exploring the modes through which contemporary society functions, he investigates social, economic and political realities to ultimately critique consumerism and its driving mechanisms. The artist once stated: “Reality is stronger than art. As an artist I do not want to reflect a reality but I do want to question it. My social upbringing does not embrace rational linear actions. I approach the world and life with primal instinctive behaviour”. For MDE15 Xhafa presents a new commission, Cartacable (Letter Cable). The work is an immediate reaction to his first meeting with Medellin, an…

Tercerunquinto’s site-specific interventions address both the gallery space and the cultural contexts that contain them. For MDE15 the artists look into Medellín’s publicpolicies that propose culture and the arts as ways for social development. In Grafiti. Representación en grado cero (Graffiti. Zero Degree Representation, from the Archaeology of Anger series), they suggest the intervention of one of the museum galleries with a series of tags on its walls, typical marks that account for anger vented on the walls in public spaces. These are done by an amateur actor –trained in an acting workshop at a cultural center sponsored by the city— who embodies the role of a person committing the vandalism. Instead of using colors…

Sorry, this entry is only available in European Spanish.

Social and cultural initiatives in Medellín become key components in the transformation and development of the city. Tricilab is a mobile laboratory created by a group of young people from the neighborhood of Moravia. This device is an alternative platform of communication to provide feedback on the social knowledge among different communities. They ask questions about art, and the influence of technology to generate autonomous actions and strengthen youth empowerment. This work is aimed to replicate the knowledge learned in the areas of expanded education that were developed in their laboratories. This team move around different places of Medellín with…

Engelen’s artistic practice and his sensitivity to local context and his conceptually rigorous methodology results in a unique participatory process that fuses sounds and concepts that transcend the distances between his native culture and the culture in Medellín. For the work that will be produced for the MDE15 Engelen will fuse sounds from traditional Colombian instruments with classical musical instruments. Based on a structure composed by Engelen, this mixture will be interpreted by musicians creating a percussive metaphorical dialog. By melding classical European and local instruments Engelen’s work offers the possibility to reflect upon the ideas of native and colonial, the differences and similarities between these types of sounds and their cultural implications.

The circumstances of the peace talks in Havana produce a lot of news stories presented in a more or less homogeneous language in the national media. They capture the possible sides and perspectives about the internal armed conflict and its causes in the public sphere. Diaz’s work is clearly against this unanimity. He addresses other conditions of the conflict making clear its complexity, and especially the diversity of cultural agendas in competition. The artist, interested in providing a clear picture of the many sides of power, uses a collection of vinyl or LPs made by State institutions such as SENA…

Garrido-Lecca is interested in the transformation of the rural landscape and changes in local traditions because of modernization processes in provincial areas. Líneas de fuego (Lines of fire) is a sculpture resembling a woven rush screen made of copper tubes that divides the exhibition space. The combination of an organic and an industrial material brings into question the fate of traditional production against industrial production coming from extractive companies. On the other hand, in the video Contornos, the camera approaches different billboards placed in urban and natural environments. One of the most striking aspects is revealed towards the end of…

His work explores the way that contradictions in the world are rendered subjective in different contexts. In La torre del ruido, he invites rappers from the underground scene in Havana to speak their mind about life in present-day Cuba through sung interventions filmed in domestic settings. The resulting discourses are invariably critical and express the thoughts of an ample cross-section of the Cuban youth. The footage is shown on dozens of monitors piled up in the form of a tower, each showing the intervention of one rapper. When approaching the installation environment, the sounds and images from the televisions strike…