Research project, 2022—ongoing

[Selena, Como la flor]

[Nezahualcóyotl, “Ah in tepilhuan”]

Giorgio Vasari arrived too late in history. Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori published in 1550, marked an emphasis on showing a History of Art to which we were not "invited". In Art, phrases like "We are late again" are examples to affirm that we were hidden. Now, dear reader, I would like to speak to you in a more intimate way: that is, to speak of the pain of "losing" a flower. Yes, we will sing and wear flowers on this occasion to be able to talk about History... of another history that will take us back to other worlds to make them continue to exist and be recognized since they were not pronounced and for this Selena's song will accompany us. 
Now, welcome to my petal of my research; in Mesoamerica between the Late Classic period (600-900 A.D.). We are almost 600 years after the Colonization of America and with it the deception of European Modernity about the history of the artist's authorship and biography. However, before "The Conquest", flowers germinated that were important in painting. 

For example, there was a school of Mayan painters who signed with flowers: the naab, a ritual symbol between two worlds: the terrestrial and the aquatic. Flowers that floated were captured to last in history without being visible, without coming to light. The flower was an attribute of decoration in the headdress of the painter, of the artist, ah naab, when it was represented in a fresco or vessel. In the same way there was a God for the artists, the monkey God. Unfortunately, if these flowers remain unseen, they will wither as Nezahualcoyotl predicted in his poetry. Subsequently, during the colonial and present times, other populations developed craft techniques linked to the flower as a gesture of representations of death. Candles filled with flowers to remember and mourn the loved ones, the souls that will never leave us. With this project I would like to question the official History and make visible how Modernity continues to generate consequences in Contemporaneity. My proposal is a dialogue in History as a new form of archeology of the future... and now LET'S SING! 

But, ah-ah-ah, how it hurts me! Ah-ah ay, how it hurts me!..

Miroir—Naab

[05.04—31.05.2024]
radicar raði’kar, POUSH, Aubervilliers

Group Show: Kenia Almaraz Murillo, Marcos Ávila Forero, Marlon de Azambuja, Cecilia Bengolea, Almendra Benavente, Valentina Canseco, Omar Castillo Alfaro, Luis Chenche, Juan Gugger, María, Ibáñez Lago, Juan Ignacio Lopez,Martín Kaulen, André Komatsu, Lívia Melzi, Jack Rothert Garcia, Sofia Salazar Rosales, Carlota Sandoval Lizarralde, Suricata

¶Margaux Knight

“The concept of post-performance questions the influence and legacy of performativity on the visual arts. It reveals artists in training and at work, involving the body, the voice, the manipulation of objects and the reading of texts. Featuring a number of artists who embody different facets of contemporary performance art, this evening accompanies the publication of a book by art historian Marie de Brugerolle, the fruit of ten years' research. Designed by the author, the scenography features a sculptural installation by Omar Castillo Alfaro and Tyler Coburn's Ergonomic Futures.”

[Post-performance Future Method/e Liv®e]

Tresser brings together recent works by artists Jimmy Beauquesne, Omar Castillo Alfaro and David
Weishaar in the gallery’s salon.

To braid is to intertwine in the same way as we make garlands of flowers, to welcome and celebrate the
other person. For this immersive exhibition, Omar Castillo Alfaro is presenting a group of sculptures from his  «Naab» project. In Mayan, ‘naab’ means ‘flower’. In Mesoamerica, several centuries after Christ, there was a school of painters who signed their work with flowers; ‘naab’ is a ritual symbol between two worlds, the terrestrial and the aquatic. To braid is to connect and pass. To pass from one to another by creating a link. 

Braiding also means knotting. To tie a friendship, the word is not in vain, the love of friends is a knot, a regular and solid series of knots that allows us to tie up. 

In his paintings, David Weishaar takes his characters (himself or others) into nocturnal worlds referenced from fantastic or gothic universes. Stories of group, of entourage, of friendship as much as of chosen family.

To braid is about forging links, experimenting and practising, with friendships as a refuge. Braiding, to make stronger: an act of resistance. Jimmy Beauquesne’s drawings on curtain and on paper seem to come from a form of magical realism. The intimate and the pop-culture, the ornamental and the science-fictional are all intertwined. The intertwining of his features creates confusion. Tresser as a figure of three, forming one and remaining three.

“Gesturally, Omar convolutely contort, incise, carve, articulates, dazzle further than the perceived materials in his work. Narratively, infusing them with the Maya flower (naab) iconography and cultural migrative thinking.

As part of the end of his residency at the Villa Belleville in Paris, Omar’s sculptural practice embodies a transgenerational historical and personal heritage, revisiting ancestral techniques. Upon entering the studio, which has been transformed into an exhibition space, visitors have to wander through the verdant vegetation that invades the entrance to discover the installation “Naab Balam - Nikteo’o”, immersed in a glowing red light. The contrast between this wild, natural outdoor environment and the artist’s impressive in situ presentation allows us to immerse ourselves for the first time in the centre of his work, and to perceive it in its wholeness.

The ensemble of the installation is displayed in three parts, with the main iron structure surrounded by earth, creating a single, linear path to the central stone sculpture. The shape is a reference to the artist’s beloved bird, named Pedro. [...]

Given its approach to height, the freedom of its forms and its intimate cage-like structure, I inevitably remembered the installations and sculptural works of Louise Bourgeois. Questioning space in relation to the body and the place given to the emotional and psychological state. They both also share the same artistic vision of being deeply involved psychologically and physically in their work. [...]”.

Another Land takes us on an exploration of a uchronic reality, in the wake of current violence, wounds of the past and concerns for the future. Selected artists collaborated on the creation of this « final » universe being in between reality and fiction. Through a science-fiction text, sculptures, video and sound installation, engage iN meaningful dialogues becoming a gateway to collective contemplation, delving into the complexities of human existence, political landscapes, meeting point between
ornamentalism and architecture, and the intimate aspects of our lives.

This exhibition tends to contradict and contaminate the Western perspective of the relationship between the marginal subject and art, established through strategies of reconciliation and disruption.

These works derive from the multiple forms generated in the cosmogonies operating in the territories of Abya Yala (the pre-conquest term for Latin America). Taking Ivy Queen and Maria Becerra’s iconic single as its title, Primer aviso recreates a declaration of autonomy, as a validation arising from the expression of a voice of its own. It is at once a meme, a refrain and warning of a confrontation to come, and it evokes the collective language of a fringe of
Latin American women who have succeeded in reclaiming their place in history from otherness and exile. 

A language condensed into mobile, transgender, multiform, cross-border bodies. By occupying the JULIO space with this collective action, the result of a curatorial complicity between curator and artists, we aim to rethink the concept of occupation, of borrowing. What does it mean to operate on foreign soil? Is there really such a thing as a neutral space, where practices coexist without
being silenced?