Mercedes Azpilicueta and Virginie Bobin invite five collaborators of the exhibition "Bestiario de Lengüitas", presented at Contemporary art centre supported by Drac Îe-de-France, to gather for a conversation around their practices. Gathered for the occasion in the studios of Duuu in the park of La Villette, they propose to imagine forms of commitment and sharing through listening, noise and voice, dimensions essential to the project. Moderated by Virginie Bobin, this exchange will be punctuated by extracts from Mercedes Azpilicueta’s pieces, more performative interventions and "small gualichos" (small auditory spells).
With: Mercedes Azpilicueta, Virginie Bobin, Hélène Harder, Emmanuelle Lafon, Lucile Sauzet, Pauline Simon and Myriam Suchet.
Review of the exhibition scheduled from January 17 to April 24, 2021
Trying to maintain chaos and excess in a world that calls for order, efficiency and transparency
"Bestiario de Lengüitas" (Bestiaire des petites langues) is an evolutionary project by the artist Mercedes Azpilicueta, in dialogue with the curator Virginie Bobin. The exhibition follows the thread of a screenplay written by Mercedes Azpilicueta for a performance that has not yet taken place. Fuelled by workshops, collaborations and rehearsals with artists, researchers, designers, dancers and singers, the works presented invite a chorus of grotesque characters to roam the stage of this upcoming performance. Using obsolete systems of knowledge, "neo-barroso" poems, failed translations and equivocal ingredients, they try to maintain chaos and excess in a world that calls for order, efficiency and transparency.
© Letter maj. Drawing Mercedes Azpilicueta, Vanina Scolavino Black ink, 5 5cm and © Mercedes Azpilicueta, drawing from the Marginalia series, 2018—2020, cochineal ink and dye on paper, 29.7 x 42 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Nogueras Blanchard, Madrid
The CAC Brétigny presents the last chapter of a series of three exhibitions, which were previously held at CentroCentro (Madrid, 2019) and Museion - Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Bozen/Bolzano, 2020) before returning to Île-de-Francede-France, where the project began in 2017 during a residency at Villa Vassilieff as part of the Pernod Ricard Fellowship. In each of these places, Mercedes Azpilicueta conducted research and conversations with interlocutors, which resonate in the works exhibited. Drawings, costumes, embroideries, videos, sound pieces and sculptures can be approached as scores, prototypes, sets, encoded knowledge systems or even characters responding to each other, rather than as autonomous works of art. These are windows on a work in progress that abounds through a multiplicity of encounters, friendships and attachments.
© Mercedes Azpilicueta, Paris is breathing [screenshot],2019, video, sound, 2 min. 37 sec. Courtesy of the artist and Nogueras Blanchard, Madrid
"Bestiario de Lengüitas" is inspired by proto-scientific knowledge devices, mixing medieval European imaginary and Latin American cosmogonies, and gathering witches, goddesses and muses from both shores of the Atlantic. The protagonists (whether alive or dead, real or fictional: humans, prosthetics, animals, demons or plants) converse in a polyphony of languages and voices that blur linear narratives. Bestiario de Lengüitas" invites the viewer to a movement close to the "Baroque of the New World", which favors instability and proliferation over the quest for a unique truth.
The CAC Brétigny, Center of contemporary art of national interest, is a facility of Coeur d'Essonne Agglomeration. It benefits from the support of the Ministry of Culture - DRAC Île-de-France, the Region Île-de-France and the Departmental Council of Essonne, with the complicity of the City of Brétigny-sur-Orge. It is a member of the TRAM and d.c.a. networks "Bestiario de Lengüitas" is an exhibition co-produced by the CAC Brétigny, in collaboration with CentroCentro, Madrid (Spain), and Museion- Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Bozen/Bolzano (Italy).
*Duuu - Mobile Radio Units. Duuu - subsidized by the Drac Île-de-France - is a radio dedicated to contemporary creation. Founded in 2012 by artists, this radio was born from the desire to make people hear situations of reflection and work.
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