Frame Visual Art Finland organises in collaboration with Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art an international seminar and a discussion in Helsinki on Alfredo Jaar’s work. This is a unique opportunity to hear international curators and other contemporary art professionals.
Artist Alfredo Jaar and Okwui Enwezor, Director of the 2015 Venice Biennale, will be talking about Jaar’s work on Saturday 17 May 2014. International seminar on Alfredo Jaar’s work will be organised at Kiasma on Wednesday 21 May. Both events are part of Jaar’s ongoing retrospective at Kiasma, Tonight No Poetry Will Serve (11 April – 7 September 2014)
Born in Chile in 1956, Alfredo Jaar has lived in New York since 1982. An artist, architect and filmmaker whose installations and public interventions have earned him international acclaim throughout the world, the artist has previously exhibited individual works in Finland in both the 1995 and 2011 ARS exhibitions and in 2011 in Turku Archipelago as part of Turku 2011 European Capital of Culture.
Please note that for the seminar on 21 May you need to register in advance at: frame-finland.fi/yhteystiedot/ilmoittautumiset/
The event on 17 May is fully booked but please email info@frame-finland for your name to be added to the waiting list.
Programme:
Alfredo Jaar and Okwui Enwezor in coversation
Saturday 17 May 2–3.30 pm
Kiasma, seminar room
Mannerheiminaukio 2, Helsinki
Artist Alfredo Jaar and Okwui Enwezor, Director of the 2015 Venice Biennale, will be talking about Jaar’s work on Saturday 17 May 2014. Organised by Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art and Frame Visual Art Finland, the event is part of Jaar’s ongoing retrospective at Kiasma, Tonight No Poetry Will Serve (11 April – 7 September 2014).
Okwui Enwezor was born in Nigeria in 1963. A curator, art critic and poet, he is currently Director of Haus der Kunst in Munich. In 2002 he was Director of the 11th Documenta and he will be Director of the 2015 Venice Biennale and Curator of the main exhibition of the Biennale.
The language of the event is English.
Please note: The event is fully booked but please email info@frame-finland for your name to be added to the waiting list.
International seminar on Alfredo Jaar’s work
Wednesday 21 May from 10 am to 3 pm
Kiasma Theatre
Mannerheiminaukio 2, Helsinki
What does the persistence on culture as capital mean today? How does contemporary art allow for space of resistance, as Alfredo Jaar claims following the philosopher Antonio Gramsci? What does the title Tonight No Poetry Will Serve thus imply?
The invited distinguished speakers have all collaborated with Alfredo Jaar as curators, commissioning and producing some of the most significant works during Jaar’s career. They will focus in the presentations on a single project each and allow us thus an insight into Jaar’s practice. The presentations will also map out the deep resonance these art works have had in the different contexts of their production and exhibition while tracing the myriad intricate connections between particular sites or situations and their global implications. Each of the expert presentations shall be followed by artist’s comments as well as by questions from the audience.
At the time of increasing debates on how to understand the political in art, Jaar’s prolific practice encourages in-depth examination of the critical and creative potential of both art spaces, such as museums and galleries, and public space. Through Jaar’s work, the seminar will respond to the challenges posed by site-specificity and public interventions as well as contribute to the acute rethinking of the indispensable value and active social role of art institutions as free zones resisting instrumentalization.
10:00 Opening words, Pirkko Siitari, Director, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art
10:15 Public Interventions – Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, Director, Fondazione Antonio Ratti in Como, Italy
11:00 One Million Finnish Passports – Maaretta Jaukkuri, Professor, Praxis – Mater’s Programme in Exhibition Studies, Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki
11:45 Lunch
13:00 Untitled (Newsweek) & The Rwanda Project – Moacir dos Anjos, Curator and Researcher, Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, Recife
14:00 Lament of the Images – Luis Perez-Oramas, Estrellita Brodsky Curator of Latin American Art, MoMA, New York
14:45 Closing remarks, Taru Elfving, Head of Programme, Frame Visual Art Finland
15:00 Coffee, Kiasma Theatre Foyer
Please register in advance at: frame-finland.fi/yhteystiedot/ilmoittautumiset/
Each presentation will be followed by a short comment from the artist and an opportunity for the audience to ask questions. The event is in English.
The seminar will be moderated by Kati Kivinen, Curator, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art.
Further information:
Kati Kivinen/Kiasma, +358 40 353 6656, kati.t.kivinen@kiasma.fi
Taru Elfving/Frame, +358 50 042 4063, taru.elfving@frame-finland.fi
Photo: Alfredo Jaar: Geography = War, 1991. FNG / Petri Virtanen.