Nada temas, dice ella. Cuando el arte revela verdades místicas trata de mostrar la fuerza con que siguen siendo hoy sustento de la creación artística, y de potenciar lo femenino como acercamiento al misterio de la existencia y como vehículo de conexión con lo sagrado a partir de la figura de Santa Teresa. Abre, además, múltiples vías de diálogo y convivencia entre arte y realidad social, entre obras históricas y actuales, y entre místicas y sistemas religiosos supuestamente irreconciliables.

Ver vídeo completo: enlace RTVE

La entrada Metrópolis – Nada temas, dice ella. se publicó primero en Rosa Martínez - Independent Art Curator.

Esta obra de Regina, ganadora en 2005 del León de Oro a la mejor artista joven en la Bienal de Venecia, fue hecha originalmente como una valla en la Calzada de Roosevelt, en Guatemala, donde una banda de violadores cometía crímenes. El nombre de la instalación se basa en un mandamiento bíblico y cuestiona la violencia de género que arrasa en el continente.

Debajo de esta obra, en uno de los salones del segundo piso del MET, se proyecta un video de la artista española Cristina Lucas, titulado Habla. En la proyección, Cristina destruye literal y simbólicamente a martillazos una reproducción en yeso del gigante Moisés, de Miguel Ángel.Para este ejercicio, la artista toma como referente literal el texto de Friedrich Nietzsche, El ocaso de los ídolos, o cómo se filosofa a martillazos. Así como en la propuesta de Regina José Galindo, la de Cristina Lucas usa la simbología religiosa para interpelar la opresión de los cuerpos femeninos.

La española Rosa Martínez fue la curadora de esta muestra que reúne la obra de 17 artistas y colectivos provenientes de diversos países y hermanados bajo el lema de la intimidad es política. Reconocida como una de las más fundamentales curadoras en el medio artístico mundial, Martínez está segura de que el arte trastoca las visiones caducas de la vida.

Haber sido la primera mujer directora de la Exposición Internacional de Venecia, en 2005, luego de 110 años de existencia de este encuentro, dice mucho de la situación de las mujeres artistas, gestoras culturales y directoras en el campo del arte. ¿Siente que ha cambiado esta situación? ¿Cuál es su valoración sobre esta realidad?

Es un honor pasar a la historia como primera mujer directora de la Bienal de Venecia. De hecho, invité a las Guerrilla Girls a mi exposición en el Arsenale y, con mucha ironía, plasmaron desalentadoras estadísticas sobre Venecia en sus posters. En 1895, año de fundación de la Bienal, participó un 2% de mujeres artistas, y un siglo más tarde, en 1995, el porcentaje fue del 9%. El poster que lo constata se exhibe ahora en el MET de Quito, junto con otros como el que se realizó específicamente para nuestra exposición en la que evidencian que «las mujeres artistas de Ecuador están en la lona».

De su trayectoria como curadora, ¿cómo siente que el arte contemporáneo ha ido calando en los públicos?; ¿cuál es su noción de la contemporaneidad?

Contemporáneo es todo lo que se vive desde el presente. El peso del pasado y los sueños y miedos sobre el futuro son contemporáneos.

Y usar lenguajes actuales para reinterpretar críticamente el pasado, analizar el presente o imaginar el futuro es una forma excelente de ser contemporáneo.

¿Cómo se concibió la propuesta conceptual de La intimidad es política y cómo dialoga ese planteamiento con la ciudad?

Pilar Estrada, directora del MET, conocía bien mi trayectoria profesional y me propuso articular una exposición que conjugara dos de las líneas de acción del Municipio de Quito: las políticas a favor de la igualdad y el deseo de acercar el arte contemporáneo a los diversos públicos de la ciudad. En esa intersección de objetivos institucionales he trabajado a menudo, y cuando vi la belleza de los espacios del MET acepté su propuesta, a pesar de las limitaciones presupuestarias y de tiempo. Planteé la posibilidad de intervenir en los espacios públicos de la ciudad y la obra de Regina José Galindo, ‘No violarás’, es la prueba de que todos nuestros esfuerzos han valido la pena.

¿Cómo se dio el proceso de selección de los diecisiete artistas y colectivos?

Hubo un período inicial en el que mantuvimos diálogos sobre la creación contemporánea en Latinoamérica y desde el MET se me facilitaron amplias referencias y dossiers sobre artistas de Ecuador, cuya escena, en ese momento, yo desconocía. Simultáneamente se definía el marco conceptual y muy pronto también acordamos el título de la muestra. La selección se fue configurando de una forma orgánica y con algunos sobresaltos. Tuvimos que elegir entre lo soñado y lo posible, entre lo deseado y lo factible. Por falta de presupuesto prescindimos de obras fundamentales como ‘A Noiva’, de Joana Vasconcelos, que hubiera sido un auténtico hito colgando en el patio principal del MET. De hecho, en el centro de la cúpula, aún está el cable que la hubiera sostenido… Por la misma razón no incluimos grandes nombres históricos como Louise Bourgeois o Ana Mendieta, que nos hubieran permitido establecer una genealogía de la creación hecha por mujeres en el siglo XX, pero tendremos documentación sobre sus obras en el catálogo de la muestra.

El acento se fue decantando hacia el arte del presente, con la voluntad de que las obras que se mostrarían no se hubieran visto antes en Quito, y que tocarían aspectos fundamentales de los discursos sobre sexo, género, lenguaje y poder.

En esta muestra ha conjugado la obra de artistas de diversos lugares, que manejan distintas técnicas, junto con el trabajo de activistas feministas, como los colectivos Mujeres Creando o Guerrilla Girls, ¿cuán importante es que el arte dialogue con el activismo?

Para mí, el arte es una forma de acción, de transformación de la visión del mundo, más allá de la técnica o el soporte en el que tome cuerpo. Comparto con Joseph Beuys el concepto de «escultura social», es decir, la idea de que una palabra o una obra que cambie la conciencia de los espectadores ya es escultura, ya es arte. El arte no es solo el objeto, el arte es la transformación que la interpretación o la vivencia de ese objeto produce en nosotros. Además de las Guerrilla Girls y Mujeres Creando, hay otro gran colectivo en la muestra, las Mujeres y Hombres de Comunidades Indígenas Zapatistas de Chiapas, México. Sus principios de buen gobierno —«servir, no servirse», «representar, no suplantar»— deberían de inspirar a muchos de nuestros políticos y líderes religiosos, y su hermoso arte, sencillo y popular, contribuye sin duda a disolver las fronteras de exclusión que intenta imponer el arte elitista.

A un día de que la Conferencia Episcopal emitiera una carta manifestando su malestar por la muestra, la Secretaría de Cultura de Quito, a través del Instituto Metropolitano de Patrimonio, emitió un informe en el que decía que el mural hecho por el colectivo boliviano Mujeres Creando debía ser removido porque no contaba con los permisos necesarios, ¿qué opinión le merece esta decisión?, ¿la considera una forma de censura?

Yo estaba ocupada ultimando la instalación de las obras cuando se inició el revuelo, y he entendido posteriormente que fue una denuncia de la Fundación Iglesia de la Compañía de Jesús al Instituto de Patrimonio la que encendió las alarmas. Hemos mantenido un diálogo continuo con las artistas, con la dirección del MET y con la Secretaría de Cultura para asegurar que cualquier afectación patrimonial que pueda existir no signifique la eliminación de la obra y estamos cerca de una solución consensuada. Como curadora, para mí, lo ideal sería seguir los protocolos internacionales y poner advertencias de que la obra podría herir la sensibilidad de los espectadores, como ya se hizo, y resolver el tema patrimonial al finalizar la muestra. Pero comprendo que cada ciudad tiene sus propias reglas respecto a la protección de sus bienes.

Luego de que las autoridades decidieran remover el mural, ¿cómo procesó esta situación con Mujeres Creando?, ¿anticipó que esto sucedería, tomando en cuenta el antecedente de censura previa del mismo mural en Bolivia?

Mujeres Creando es un grupo de activistas que lleva 25 años luchando por la justicia social, por la igualdad de derechos, por la posibilidad de ser felices más allá de las imposiciones que la religión, entre otras formas de control social, ha impuesto sobre los cuerpos. Conocía su trabajo desde que expusieron en el Museo Nacional Reina Sofía de Madrid en 2000 y no quise perder la oportunidad de colaborar con ellas. Su práctica artística y política está cerca del concepto de la muestra. La idea de actualizar su ‘Milagroso altar blasfemo’ fue motivada porque es una de sus obras más recientes y la que mejor sintetiza su visión artística e ideológica.

Este altar es de hecho un work in progress y en él crean una magnífica reinterpretación del peso del falocentrismo sobre los propios hombres, a la vez que evidencian cómo están sujetos a las instituciones de poder. Me conmueve su secuencia de vírgenes y especialmente su virgen Dolorosa, que, en esta ocasión, no llora por el hijo, sino por las mujeres e hijas muertas por feminicidio. En ningún caso pensé que la reacción iba a ser tan desbordada.

¿Cómo afecta esta situación a la muestra, pues ahora el foco de atención pública es el mural y no el resto de las valiosas obras que se exhiben?

Mi discurso curatorial se asienta en la voluntad de dar espacio a voces diferentes, a propuestas que muestren la riqueza y la complejidad de los discursos contemporáneos. La selección de La intimidad es política muestra esa diversidad con diferentes intensidades, desde los fantásticos retratos y autorretratos de Zanele Muholi a las instalaciones anticoloniales de Nora Pérez; desde el video cuestionador de la violencia de Marina Abramovic al de Cristina Lucas «filosofando a martillazos» sobre el Moisés de Miguel Ángel, o desde la monumental secuencia documental de Santiago Sierra sobre las viudas en la ciudad india de Vindravan hasta la preciosa reflexión de Sandra Monterroso sobre los procesos de teñir y desteñir, de aprender y desaprender.

Hay obras muy duras, como el documental de Núria Güell, La Feria de las Flores, que analiza el vergonzante turismo sexual en Colombia a través de niñas y adolescentes que guían visitas en el Museo de Antioquía comentando las obras de Botero desde su propia experiencia de explotación. Hay otras más irónicas, como la de Katia Sepúlveda, escenificando un encuentro sexual en la puerta del principal prostíbulo de la ciudad alemana de Colonia, que registra el mayor número de clientes precisamente el 14 de febrero, día de los enamorados. En este contexto, los debates sobre el ‘Milagroso altar blasfemo’ han abierto una puerta para acceder al resto de la muestra.

¿Cuál es su valoración de los artistas ecuatorianos que curó?

Estoy entusiasmada con los tres que finalmente seleccioné: Saskia Calderón, Santiago Reyes y Juana Córdova. Sus propuestas muestran que son autores de vocabularios internacionales a partir de su realidad local.

Antes de empezar la curaduría de La intimidad es política, ¿Qué conocía acerca del arte ecuatoriano y qué le llamaba más la atención?

Sabía de la Bienal de Cuenca y me llegaban también los ecos de algunos de los artistas que participaban en ella, pero no había tenido la oportunidad de adentrarme en la escena ecuatoriana, en la que, tanto los trabajos artísticos como las reflexiones curatoriales, están muy maduras.

Ahora lo que deseo es expandir este conocimiento a otros circuitos y proyectos internacionales.

Texto completo en cartóNPiedra

Entrevista realizada por FAUSTO RIVERA YÁNEZ (Latacunga, 1989). Periodista, crítico cultural y economista. Fue editor de la revista de cultura cartóNPiedra y de la revista de economía másQmenos. Ha colaborado en diferentes revistas nacionales y extranjeras. Actualmente es editor de la sección cultural de Diario El Telégrafo y forma parte del consejo editorial de la revista Letras del Ecuador, de la Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana. Es integrante de la segunda generación de la Red Latinoamericana de Jóvenes Periodistas.

La entrada Rosa Martínez: El arte como forma de acción (cartóNPiedra, Agosto 2017) se publicó primero en Rosa Martínez - Independent Art Curator.

Inventing Venice: A Director’s Roundtable

by Massimiliano Gioni

Rosa Martínez, ’05

How much time did you have to organize the Biennale? How did this impact your process and results?
We had only about nine months to start thinking and acting, even though I said yes as soon as I was asked by the president of the Biennale at that time, Davide Croff, since I was aware of the significance of being inscribed in the history of the event as the first woman director in its 110 years of existence. I was also thrilled at the possibility of creating a show in the amazing spaces of the Arsenale. So these challenges compensated for the short time—made more pressing by the slowness of the Italian bureaucracy—and all the other difficulties. When I learned that the president had also chosen another woman to curate the Central Pavilion, and that this woman was María de Corral, I was very happy to share this chance and yet to have different spaces. The fact that we were two women directors (instead of the classic one man) prompted Italian feminists in Milan to ask the president a funny question at the press conference: had he made this decision because in his male unconscious it took two women to equal one man?

What was your budget? How much did you raise?
The budget was a big mystery. I never knew what my total budget was, but I remember that it was cut by a big amount when I said no to a request made by a sponsor. Neither I nor the artists I invited would agree to convert the Arsenale into an advertisement space for coffee machines, with chairs bearing the sponsor logo all around. So I had to ask some galleries and artists to help me balance the cut, and they did.

In curating the show, did you aim to talk to your peers or to address a wider audience?
Harald Szeemann [director of the 1999 and 2001 Venice Biennales] told me that when you do a show you always have to keep your peers in mind. However, I think that in an international event as meaningful and important as this one you have to present la bella combinazione, addressing a wider audience. You must take the event a little bit further than your predecessors took it, but you also have to make it broad and comprehensible enough to reach the general public.

What did you want to do differently than your predecessors? Did you accomplish that goal?
Being a woman, I wanted to reflect on the exclusion that female artists have suffered historically, and the Guerrilla Girls helped me very much with their statistics. Through a series of ironic, large-scale posters, they showed how in 1895 only 2.4 percent of the artists who participated in the International Exhibition in Venice were female; but the shocking thing was that one century later, in 1995, the proportion was only 9 percent. I also wanted to reflect on other political inequalities, so the sound project by Santiago Sierra at the corridor entrance was very meaningful. Among many other things, he stated how in 2005 the countries that had a national pavilion inside the Giardini represented 24 percent of the world’s population and produced 83 percent of the Global National Product, while the countries having a national pavilion outside the Giardini represented 34 percent of world’s population, producing 9 percent of GNP.

What was the most complex project you were involved with?
The installation Cube by Gregor Schneider at the Piazza San Marco was so complex it became totally impossible to achieve, even though the artist had financial support to do it. We had to go through a hard process of obstacles and face political censorship, because the piece resembled the Kaaba in Mecca, the holiest site in Islam.

Which key project were you unable to pull off?
In addition to Cube, there was an ambitious project by Jun Nguyen Hatsushiba that could not be presented. Jun wanted to create a big performative installation to criticize the commercialization of domestic water by Coca-Cola in Vietnam. There was also a proposal by Gianni Motti and Christoph Büchel for which we did not get permission: they wanted to sink a container in the waters outside the Arsenale to simulate the isolated conditions of the prisoners in Guantánamo.

What was the harshest criticism you faced?
Believe it or not, the harshest criticism came from some Spanish magazine editors and art critics. The provincial envy was one of the worst things we had to face. Other power strategies could be observed in the critical reception of the event. For example some hegemonic critics dropped a line in major art magazines saying the show was not relevant, then spent four pages acclaiming their own national artists—even though those artists, while well established in the market, had very little to say about the present. But this is part of the game.

What did you risk?
I risked losing my patience, especially with the managing director of the Biennale at the time. But María de Corral was very wise in advising me to keep calm, and Robert Storr, who also suffered that manager’s dark intrigues, finally had the pleasure of seeing him resign prior to the opening of his Biennale in 2007.

What did you lose in the process of curating?What did you gain?
I did not have the chance to bring the show even further as I did not have time for deeper and wider artistic research, but I gained many pleasures: having wonderful projects by artists that I deeply believe in; becoming part of the history of an extraordinary international art event; working with a wonderful local administrative team; and, last but not least, learning to walk through the labyrinths of Venice without getting lost.

How do you think your Biennale is remembered? How do you think it impacted the history of the Biennale itself, or changed the format of what a biennial can be?
From the curatorial point of view, I intended to make the syntax of my exhibition clear and legible; I used the longitudinal walk of the Arsenale to play with similarities and oppositions between the works placed on either side. By creating conjunctions and disjunctions, contrasts and connections, I proposed an interpretation of what contemporary creation is all about. Many people understood and appreciated this, together with the political ambition, the humor or the beauty of some of the selected projects. But I was especially surprised by the sexist evaluation made by an important male dealer: he said he had never seen the Arsenale so neat and tidy, so it was obvious that a woman had taken care of it. Apart from that, my contribution to the history of biennials has to be appraised by others, taking into account other projects I’ve done, such as the 5th Istanbul Biennial in 1997, the 3rd SITE Santa Fe Biennial in 1999, the Biennial EVA 2000 in Limerick and several international exhibitions that I co-curated during the decade 2000-10. My desire and my curatorial actions have always been invested in what could be called the expanded field of contemporary art, bringing the exhibition beyond its walls, dissolving esthetic ideologies and interacting with local communities. So, in Venice, the Arsenale was beautiful and charged with meaning but still small.

2005 Prizes:

• Golden Lion for best artist of the international exhibition: Thomas Schütte
• Golden Lion for an artist under 35: Regina José Galindo
• Young Italian Art Prize: Lara Favaretto
• Golden Lion for lifetime achievement: Barbara Kruger
• Golden Lion for best national participation: France, represented by Annette Messager
  
  PHOTO: View of El Anatsui’s Fresh and Fading Memories, 2007, aluminum and cooper wire, 360 by 240 inches; installed on the exterior of the Palazzo Fortuny in the 52nd Venice Biennale, 2007. Photo Giovanni Pancino. Courtesy Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.

Rosa Martínez is an independent curator and art collections consultant. 

Full article: Art in America

La entrada Art In America, Nueva York, EEUU, Marzo, 2013 se publicó primero en Rosa Martínez - Independent Art Curator.

CURATOR ROSA MARTINEZ TALKS ABOUT ANISH KAPOOR AND PROJECTS FOR INTERVENTIONS OF PUBLIC SPACE

ANISH KAPOOR, ISLAMIC MIRROR
Sharq al-Andalus Hall at Las Claras Convent, Murcia
November 25th 2008 – February 10th 2009
Project for Interventions in Public Space
Artistic Director, Rosa Martinez

www.museosantaclara.com
www.espacioav.es

Rosa Martinez, Director of the 51st Venice Biennale (2005), Chief Curator of the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art (2004-2007) and owner of long list of highly esteemed curatorial positions is leading the new exciting program, Projects for Interventions of Public Space. The inaugural artist for Martinez’s current project is the internationally renowned and UK based, Anish Kapoor, who has been one of the nation’s most celebrated contemporary sculptors. In 1990, he represented the UK at the Venice Biennale’s Giardini and won the coveted Turner prize in 1991, moreover, Kapoor has been the focus for numerous significant exhibitions at the Tate Modern (London), Hayward Gallery (London), Guggenheim (Bilbao and Venice) and many others. On November 25 2008, Kapoor and Martinez will launch the artist’s new work, Islamic Mirror (2008), along with the curator’s latest project, Interventions of Public Space, at the Las Claras Convent in Murcia, Spain. Veronica Tello discusses these innovations with Martinez.

Veronica Tello: How has it been working with Anish Kapoor for the Projects for Interventions of Public Space? How did this working relationship and project come about?
Rosa Martinez: Anish Kapoor is an extremely busy artist but a very precise one. I had the chance to experience this when three of his works were included in the exhibition Center of Gravity that I curated in 2004 for the international opening of Istanbul Museum of Modern Art. Anish is continuously involved in many and very relevant projects and in every occasion he knows the best path to take. We started a dialogue about meaning and specificity, about outdoors and indoor interventions, and at a certain moment he just proposed the exact piece for the right context in Murcia. An “Islamic Mirror” would be installed in the major hall of an old Islamic Palace, which is now used as a public museum, currently located inside a Christian Monastery. It was a joy when I felt the meaningful conjunction between the artwork and the place. Instead of identifying public art as art in the street, Anish believes art becomes public when the spectator interprets it. I also believe “public space” can be the space of historic condensation, sheltered and regulated by public institutions that is converted into cultural heritage for individual and collective use, reflection and enjoyment. So it is an excellent matching of desire and necessity.

VT: Can you tell me about the region and context, Sharq al-Andalus Hall at Las Claras Convent, Murcia, wherein Anish Kapoor’s Islamic Mirror will be exhibited?
RM: Murcia is an autonomous region at the South East of Spain. Its economy depends on tourism and agriculture, mainly. The desire of its government authorities to project the region internationally directed them towards the idea of organizing a series of public art projects. When they called me, it was agreed that Anish Kapoor would be a wonderful artist to begin with. When I saw the Monastery of Las Claras I was fascinated with the possibility of connecting contemporary art with a wealth of diverse cultural traditions. The chance of discovering the transversal relations between the Christian mysticism of cloistered nuns of the site, the Sufi poetics of Ibn Arabí (a mystic especially significant here given his birth in Murcia) and the conceptions of beauty and spirituality embodied in the contemporary art works by Kapoor was a wonderful challenge. A shared ground base unites the spiritual research over and beyond the formal differences and rituals that might separate religious beliefs, scientific and technological research, and aesthetic explorations.

VT: Islamic Mirror is part of Intervention of Public Space for which you are Artistic Director and which will present a series of public art works: can you tell me more about your role and ambitions for the program?
RM: I am a strong defender of the idea of the expanded field of art, and I have always enjoyed artworks going out of the sacred and protected museum walls. I already showed that during the 5th International Istanbul Biennial in 1997, when a lot of historical and civil places were offered to the participating artists. The Yerebatan Cistern, the Hagia Irene Church, the Maiden´s Tower in the middle of the Bosphorus and the International Ataturk airport were used as venues. Santa Fe in New Mexico or Limerick in Ireland where other contexts where art invaded the city and had a rich dialogue with its history and everyday life. Those were big and ambitious projects. Now in Murcia the scale is smaller and we will do only one project per year. But as Anish himself recalls: “Scale is a question of meaning and not of size”. And I believe the condensation of beauty and content we have achieved is very strong.

VT: Within your curatorial practice you have often sought to challenge spectators, your exhibitions have been politically provocative, you do not tend to present ‘easy’ art. With this in mind, how would you interpret the role of art within public space?
RM: I am looking for the awakening of consciousness and for a critical understanding of reality: internal and external and also, individual and social. Art has to propose a relevant interpretation and a poetic and ideological transformation for the spectators. As a curator I am also extremely interested in creating a pleasurable and beautiful grammar for the exhibition display. I am looking for conjunctions and disjunctions between the space and the works. To me, the exhibitions I have curated might be relevant and touching but not provocative. The provocation is out there, in the real world.

VT: In line with Kapoor’s most recent works, Islamic Mirror is a circular concave mirror measuring 2.4 metres in diameter and weighing approximately 80 kilograms Needless to say, it is an ambitious work. Situated within the context of Las Claras, visitors will see themselves in multiple images, yet the mirror will never reflect the details of the convent life. The work seems to create a beautiful and radical shift and rupture in how we experience the religious space – abstracting it, yet involving this abstraction for the purpose of exploiting its architectonic and aesthetic potential. Do you agree?
RM: You are totally right. The placement of the work creates a visual and material space through which spectators are included in the piece. When they see their own image in the mirror, at the same time globally inversed and multiplied in positive fragments, they can live a unique aesthetic experience. They might feel they are a temporary epicentre of the cosmos.

VT: There is a catalogue that accompanies Kapoor’s exhibition. It comprises various images of the production of Islamic Mirror, showing Kapoor building the artwork in Madrid, the details of the computerized calculations made in Japan and documentations of the artwork’s installation in Las Clara’s convent. Clearly, there is an emphasis on process, and the mechanics and materiality of the work – rather than just a focus on the finished product and its exhibition. It seems to me that the idea of a public intervention in space is being intertwined with unveiling the process of constructing the work, so as not to not mystify the artist and artwork? Does this process bring the public, the artist and the work closer together?
RM: What we call spirituality, sublime feelings or aesthetic pleasure, is always born out from a material and sensorial experience. So for me it is very important to make clear where the “magic” or “mysterious” comes from, how meaning is constructed. I think this allows the spectators to be aware of how linguistic and poetic innovation can help to change us. In the Kapoor catalogue the process of constructing and installing the Islamic Mirror at Sala Sharq al-Andalus, coexists with the inclusion of other narratives: a poem by Ibn Arabí and a legend on the small church of San Baudelio in Soria, Spain. The whole book deals with the idea of necessary and meaningful encounters between religion, science, technology, architecture and art. All of them are fundamental ways to think over the meaning of our being in this world. And, the research points toward love as being one of the major forces for creation and positive transformation.

VT: What else are you working on, or would like to work on in the future?
RM: The last decade was for me an incredible route through some of the most important international biennials: from Istanbul to Santa Fe; from Limerick to Pusan in Korea; from Venice to Sao Paulo or Moscow. I experienced the speed and the hybridisations between locality and internationality, and acting in such places was a wonderful process for experimenting and learning on how art can help creating a transnational utopia. For the next decade I would like to put the accent on very meaningful projects, where content and not size is the most important value. I am open to a new, slower and deeper becoming.

http://whitehotmagazine.com

La entrada Whitehot Magazine, Berlin, Alemania January, 2009 se publicó primero en Rosa Martínez - Independent Art Curator.

Hace sólo cinco meses que se dio la noticia de que dos españolas serán las comisarias de la exposición internacional en la 51ª edición de la Bienal de Venecia, que se desarrollará del 12 de junio al 6 de noviembre próximos. Ellas empezarán esta semana a presentar su programa en distintas ciudades. María de Corral y Rosa Martínez explicaron a Babelia algunas de las líneas generales de sus respectivos proyectos y las ideas que tienen sobre el mundo del arte hoy.

Cuando la 51ª Bienal de Venecia abra sus puertas el próximo 12 de junio, las dos comisarias de esta edición, las españolas María de Corral y Rosa Martínez, habrán cumplido con un difícil encargo: completar las dos exposiciones internacionales en sólo nueve meses, partiendo de cero en casi todos sus aspectos. Situación menos ventajosa que la del ya designado comisario de la Bienal para 2007, el norteamericano Robert Storr. Un caramelo envenenado del que ambas han saboreado tanto lo dulce como lo amargo. María de Corral (1940) ha titulado su exposición para el Pabellón Italia La experiencia del arte, que busca los puntos comunes en la diversidad de la creación actual. Rosa Martínez (Soria, 1955) presentará en el Arsenal Siempre un poco más lejos, inspirada en uno de los libros de cómic de Corto Maltés, dibujado por el veneciano Hugo Pratt, en la que revisará las líneas más marcadas del arte del tercer milenio.

El presidente de la Bienal de Venecia, el empresario Davide Croff, declaró a la prensa, ya antes de proponer el comisariado a las dos españolas, que pretendía hacer de esta edición “una bienal de biennials”. Algo que no parece haberles transmitido a ellas.

MARÍA DE CORRAL. Lo que nos pidió es que fuera una bienal significativa, “seria”. En la que realmente se hablara de arte y se mostrase arte. Pero sin imponer nada. Al final tú tienes que hacer una bienal, no ideal porque no se puede, sino lo mejor dentro de los instrumentos y las posibilidades que tienes. Sin duda, el poco tiempo que hemos tenido es un factor que ha influido en nuestra selección, queramos o no.

ROSA MARTÍNEZ. Nos lo dijeron el 3 de septiembre y ambas teníamos otros compromisos anteriores.

M. de C. Luego, además, hemos tenido cambios. Se cayó el techo de la sala Galileo Chini, por lo que tuve que cambiar el concepto de la entrada a la exposición. Tienes que adaptarte siempre a las circunstancias.

R. M. La lógica de las biennials, tal como ha evolucionado el fenómeno bienal y la experiencia de las dos ediciones anteriores en Venecia -la de Szeemann y la de Francesco Bonami, que tuvo una media de 300 a 500 artistas-, ha dado la imagen de un gran supermercado donde cabe todo. Nosotras hemos pensado en presentar un número más limitado de artistas, alrededor de un centenar. PREGUNTA. ¿Qué visión le ha guiado en su proyecto?

R. M. María recibió el encargo de poner el acento más en lo clásico, en una mirada retrospectiva, y yo en una visión del futuro. Son campos en los que cada una ha venido trabajando a lo largo de su trayectoria, pero creo que también ha habido por parte de las dos un ejercicio conceptual y curatorial con la voluntad, en su caso, de poner artistas del presente, y en el mío, poner algunas figuras de referencia del pasado. Porque no creo que se pueda trazar una línea muy clara y decir “éstos son emergentes” simplemente porque tengan menos de 35 años. En mi caso el criterio ha sido el de buscar posiciones de artistas que durante los últimos diez años han tenido una continuidad en su trabajo y han sabido renovarse y superar los clichés estilísticos que los identificaban.

M. de C. Lo que he querido hacer yo es una exposición de arte y de artistas. Creo que la variedad y amplitud de propuestas en este momento es infinita. Tantas como artistas. Por tanto siempre tienes que seleccionar.Para mí siguen igual de vivas algunas obras de los años setenta que las de artistas que tienen ahora 28 años. No voy a desarrollar un solo tema, sino varios, que responden a las preocupaciones actuales: el cuerpo, la violencia, el dominio. También figurará el interés por asuntos que se han tratado en el pasado en el cine, en el vídeo o en la performance, y que ahora se abordan de forma diferente. Tendrán un lugar también preocupaciones como las surgidas a partir del 11-S o el 11-M, el tsunami… Los artistas las reflejan en sus obras, aunque no de forma explícita. No me interesan los artistas que se expresan de forma explícita sino los que siempre ofrecen una doble lectura.

P. En la anterior bienal, la de 2003, usted presentó en el pabellón español la obra de Santiago Sierra (el edificio tapiado en el que se exigía el pasaporte español a los visitantes). Fue una pieza impactante y polémica. ¿En su propuesta para esta bienal hay también riesgo?

R. M. Yo siempre intento que haya riesgo, ir más allá de lo que está establecido. La de Santiago Sierra no fue una propuesta romántica, creo que fue muy radical y él podría encajar en esa idea de ir “un poco más lejos” porque yo quise ir un poco más lejos en lo que se había hecho en el pabellón hasta ese momento. Ésa es la filosofía que ha inspirado todas mis exposiciones. El deseo de llevar la lógica del evento un poquito más allá. Por otro lado, procuro siempre trabajar site specific, para un lugar determinado. Cuando me invitaron a Venecia quise buscar en la densidad cultural que tiene la ciudad, en el juego de fricción entre la alta y la baja cultura, me encantó tomar como fuente de inspiración la figura de Corto Maltés, el prototipo del viajero romántico dibujado e inventado por Hugo Pratt, que es veneciano y que personifica el sueño de querer ir siempre más allá.

P. En ese riesgo que asumirá en la exposición, ¿habrá piezas impactantes para el espectador?

R. M. Creo que el poder del arte está precisamente en su polisemia. Que la lectura no sea rápida y fácil, donde el mensaje se capte a la primera, se consuma y se olvide. La lectura del muro sencillo de Sierra tenía mil resonancias: hablaba de las fronteras, de la inmigración, de muchas cosas. Una obra de arte tiene que tener este potencial semántico. Y en la selección que estoy preparando hay algunas propuestas quizá espectaculares, pero otras muy intimistas, muy delicadas, invisibles casi. Para mí es muy importante el deseo de libertad, el deseo de inclusión de la periferia, entre otras, la de las mujeres, que han estado apartadas de los discursos dominantes durante mucho tiempo.

M. de C. Las cosas están cambiando mucho porque, por ejemplo, yo considero que España ha estado siempre en la periferia porque nunca ha estado presente. Ahora, sin embargo, se pone de moda incluir países del Este y se crean otras periferias.

R. M. Hay una imposición del mercado que hace que de pronto esté de moda China. Lo que está haciendo Occidente es consumir al otro. En Babelia salió hace poco (el 5 de febrero) una lista de los 100 artistas más importantes del panorama internacional. Creo que el 60% eran europeos, alemanes, hombres, y había muy poca periferia. El mercado lo tiene muy claro: a los artistas les dejamos que hablen de su otredad, están obligados a documentar su sufrimiento, a expresarlo. Hay una especie de consumo de lo exótico que a muchos artistas les da la oportunidad de entrar en el mainstream. Me parece que es positivo.

P. Ya que menciona esa lista, ¿son esos artistas los que vamos a ver en la bienal?

M. de C. No. Y yo estaba tristísima cuando la vi porque no tengo casi ningún artista de éstos .

R. M. Yo tengo alguno. De todas maneras, una lista de ese tipo es una bofetada. Eso es la realidad. Lo que nosotras estamos haciendo -o cualquier intelectual- es construir un sueño efímero. Construir la ilusión de que otros territorios de libertad y de pensamiento son posibles. Por eso estamos en la bienal y no en una feria de arte.

P. ¿Va a haber más artistas españoles este año en la bienal?

M. de C. Sí, va a haber artistas españoles este año. No podemos dar los nombres todavía, por contrato.

R. M. En la edición anterior hubo sólo un artista español en la sección Utopia Station, donde hacían carteles. Y eso fue lo único. La presencia era cero.

M. de C. En la Documenta, presentar sólo a Pere Portabella como único artista español a estas alturas de la vida es una tomadura de pelo.

P. Se habla de la bienalización en el mundo del arte. ¿Se han convertido en foros multitudinarios para ver el arte actual? ¿Para hacer turismo cultural? ¿Qué papel tienen las ferias y las biennials?

M. de C. Son dos cosas muy diferentes. Cada vez más se intenta que las ferias, además de acontecimientos comerciales, sean un fenómeno cultural. Me interesan las dos desde un punto de vista diferente. Para mí ir a la feria de Basilea es muy interesante porque compro para colecciones. Ahí salen obras que de otra forma no sabes que existen, no ves artistas jóvenes que empiezan a trabajar en galerías que te inspiran confianza por su visión, interesa también ver cómo se mueve el mercado. Y luego las propuestas en Basilea, Art Unlimited, que es como los Project Rooms de Arco sólo que hechos de forma gigantesca. Ahí hay cosas que no verás en una feria ni en un museo.

P. Pero quizá haya muchos puntos en común entre biennials y ferias. ¿Qué sucede cuando las biennials parecen ferias?

R. M. …O cuando las ferias quieren parecer biennials. Yo no compro para colecciones, no he comprado nunca. Mis colecciones son el programa de mis exposiciones. Pero lo que me impresionó de Basilea el año pasado es ver esa sección Art Unlimited, que tenía el espíritu de una bienal. Pero ahí solamente estaba quien podía pagar la cantidad de dinero que ellos exigen para poder tener un stand. Y yo leí el concepto de Art Unlimited, que me hizo mucha gracia, y decía: “Una sección sin limitaciones. Sin limitaciones presupuestarias, de espacio o curatoriales”. El comisario es una limitación, y yo creo que tienen razón. Los curators somos una limitación porque tenemos criterio y porque no somos parte -quizá lejana- del mismo juego. Las ferias son hoy para mí el ejemplo más claro de las estrategias neoliberales. Quien tiene dinero está ahí. Richard Serra estaba en esta última edición con dos piezas grandiosas. Parte del rol que debemos reivindicar en una bienal es que haya una interpretación intelectual, curatorial, fuera del caos en el que nos estamos moviendo. Donde no es sólo el dinero el que marca el paso.

P. ¿Cuál es el papel del comisario ante el fin de las tendencias?

R. M. Creo que un comisario es una figura que se puede comparar a un editor, a la de un psicoanalista también y a la de una persona materna que saca lo mejor de ese artista. A un editor porque tienes la distancia crítica que te permite ver lo mejor de cada creador, e intentas presentar su obra con una coherencia discursiva que permite que los espectadores la entiendan también más claramente. A un psicoanalista porque a mí también me interesa mucho el trabajo procesual y el diálogo con los artistas. No parto de obras completas sino que empiezo con un diálogo con el artista para llegar a una conclusión común sobre lo que será mejor para cierta exposición.

M. de C. Eso también lo he hecho, incluso con los muertos. Con muestras como la de Gorki o Morandi he entrado en contacto con la familia, con la gente que expuso con él, con críticos. Siempre tienes una idea de lo que quieres hacer, pero para dar una visión que aporte algo y que esté de acuerdo con el tiempo en el que vives. Todo el arte clásico hay que mostrarlo con una visión de nuestro tiempo. De otra manera, la gente no lo va a entender igual. Por eso creo que los museos clásicos tienen que cambiar sus colecciones de acuerdo con la visión que pueden tener los artistas jóvenes del pasado.

P. Lo que sí hay es un cierto retorno a la pintura, así como un auge de los medios tecnológicos.

M. de C. Voy a tener de todo.

R. M. Para mí la fotografía y el vídeo son la continuación lógica y tecnológica de la pintura. En el siglo XV, cuando se empezó a hacer pintura al óleo, era un medio propio de la época. ¿Que hoy los artistas no pueden pintar? Sí, sí pueden. Se siguen sobreponiendo unos a otros. Pero la tecnología ha cambiado. La revolución industrial y la tecnológica han aportado nuevos soportes y nuevos medios y, por tanto, los artistas tienen que utilizarlos también.

M. de C. También pienso que hay una complejidad en nuestro mundo que probablemente hace cien años no existía. Seguramente lo que puedes expresar con una pintura clásica es casi un referente a la propia pintura, mientras el vídeo o la instalación son medios que están más de acuerdo con la complejidad y con la expresión actual de todo el mundo. No puedes estar todo el día con el ordenador, la televisión, el cine y la información que nos llega, y enfrentarte a un lienzo en un caballete como hace siglos. Además visualmente hay muchísimo vídeo que de lo que habla realmente es de pintura.

P. ¿El visitante va a tener que pasar muchas horas viendo vídeos en esta bienal?

R. M. En la bienal de Kuang Yu, en Corea, calcularon que el tiempo medio que un espectador estaba delante de una obra era de un minuto y medio. Y que no resistían más. El vídeo lo puedes pasar muy deprisa, al igual que una pintura, o te puedes quedar extasiada viéndola y pensándola. Vídeo habrá en la bienal…

P. En un mundo globalizado ¿se va a mantener la estructura de los viejos pabellones nacionales en la bienal?

M. de C. Supongo que sí. A mí no me parece mal. Cada país tiene su pabellón y la posibilidad de hacer una exposición. Me parece enriquecedor. Si verdaderamente el comisario del pabellón es válido, lo que tienes es una visión más amplia. Se añaden posibilidades, no se quitan.

R. M. La Bienal de Venecia es el paradigma de la convivencia de modelos de entender la nacionalidad hoy. Está el modelo de los pabellones nacionales que todavía conserva la ilusión de la soberanía, de la autonomía, y además están todos puestos en el contexto arcádico de los jardines donde parece que todos pueden convivir sin guerras. Es una construcción que responde a un cierto modelo ideológico de cómo se entendían las nacionalidades a finales del siglo XIX. La exposición internacional intenta jugar con otro ejercicio, que es el de la convivencia entre artistas de diferentes contextos geopolíticos, de distintos contextos culturales. O sea, que coexisten los dos modelos en esta bienal. Hay otras biennials posteriores, nacidas después de los años setenta, en las que los pabellones nacionales ya no existen.

Dos carreras internacionales

LAS TRAYECTORIAS profesionales de María de Corral y Rosa Martínez tienen algunas divergencias, pero también puntos en común. De Corral fue directora de exposiciones de la Fundación “la Caixa” de 1981 a 1991, donde inició la importante colección de arte contemporáneo que la institución ahora posee. En 1983 comisarió la muestra del pabellón español en la Bienal de Venecia. De 1991 a 1994 dirigió el Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, en Madrid. En 2002 dirigió el proyecto para el nuevo museo de arte contemporáneo en Santander.

Rosa Martínez empezó a coordinar actividades culturales en la Fundación “la Caixa”, para asumir de 1988 a 1992 la dirección artística de la Bienal de Barcelona. Fue co-comisaria de la Manifesta 1, en 1996; al año siguiente dirigió la Bienal de Estambul, y en 1999 la SITE de Santa Fe (Estados Unidos). De 1998 a 2002 dirigió los Project Rooms de la Feria Arco, en Madrid. En 2003 fue comisaria del pabellón español en la Bienal de Venecia, donde presentó a Santiago Sierra. Este año formó parte del equipo curatorial de la 1ª Bienal de Moscú.

Nota completa: ElPais

La entrada EL PAÍS, Madrid, 5 de marzo, 2005, Babelia se publicó primero en Rosa Martínez - Independent Art Curator.

Aug. 2, 2005, Venice Biennale co-curator Rosa Martínez on art and politics.

Talking a Little Further, by Augustine Zenakos

The moment one enters the exhibition “Always a Little Further” in the grand Arsenale spaces at the 51st Venice Biennale, June 12-Nov. 6, 2005, one hears disembodied voices listing the costs of past exhibitions, the salary of each successive artistic director, even the price of a single glass of wine during each year of the biennale’s 110-year history. It is a sound piece by Santiago Sierra, one of many politicized works chosen for the show by curator Rosa Martínez, who has become famous for her uncompromising feminism and for mixing art and politics. But, one wonders, can such choices be effective in the context of the world’s most visible showcase for contemporary art?Martínez sat down for a wide-ranging interview during the biennale vernissage.

Augustine Zenakos: You have a reputation for independence, as well as for taking rather risky political moves, such as inviting Greenpeace to participate in the 3rd Santa Fe Biennial, or serving as curator of the Spanish pavilion for the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003, for which Santiago Sierra bricked up the pavilion entryway. How do you feel now about representing one of the strongest institutions in contemporary art?

Rosa Martínez: I am not identifying with the institution. I think it is a temporary marriage between the institution and me. One of the things we have to defend as curators is our intellectual independence. I have tried to defend it, as much as I have been able to, in this case. Even though the Italian Minister of Culture, Rocco Buttiglione, was not very happy, I am quite pleased with what I have done with the show. I have tried to bring my esthetic and intellectual statements as far as possible, even if I could not reach as far as I wanted. This is, though, the normal way to proceed, because here in Italy the administration is so complicated and everything moves so slowly. So, I think there is a clear distance between the institution and myself.

AZ: But, how do you negotiate, within your own thinking, a certain paradox that presents itself… For example, Santiago Sierra’s sound piece in “Always a Little Further” is very much about the material conditions underlying the esthetic escapade that is the Venice Biennale — a critique directed at the biennale itself. How can this critique ever be effective? How can it ever be anything more than decoration?

RM: I think that, even if we are just talking on a micro-level, it is effective. If I didn’t believe that, then I would probably do only decorative shows. But if I select pieces like those of Santiago Sierra, or of the Guerrilla Girls, or of Regina José Galindo, or of Gianni Motti and Christoph Büchel, it is because I believe that even in the context of the market and our neoliberal world, there is a space for critique. So, I don’t think it is a field totally closed, where artists are just decorators. Maybe they also decorate, but at the same time they can actively affect people’s consciousness.

AZ: So, you think that art can inspire personal change?

RM: Yes.

AZ: Because I think we have probably abandoned the prospect of social change…

RM: Yes, in general it is quite abandoned. But I still think there is some hope in the work of several anti-globalization movements and certain activists like the Guerrilla Girls. I still think there is a little bit of hope…

AZ: Davide Croff, the president of the Foundation La Biennale di Venezia, said in an interview in the Financial Times that he wanted to increase the amount of private funds in the biennale’s €30 million budget from 35 percent to 45 percent, and also that he intended to try to export the biennale to other countries, primarily to China. I know Croff has a background in banking, and his plan for the biennale sounds a little like he’s talking about a state-owned telecom business or a supermarket chain. He even had an advertising slogan: “There are people who cannot come to Venice, so we will take Venice to them.” Now, when one walks into your exhibition, one is confronted by all those political statements — feminist social criticism, like the Guerrilla Girls’ posters, or the big chandelier made with tampons by Joana Vasconcelos. Does political art fit into a program of cultural export? In the last analysis, is everything a product?

RM: How does the Guggenheim Museum act? I mean, how are museums acting today? We are living in a moment where cultural industries have provided a very important economic strategy for the development of cities. We see it in Bilbao, we see it in Venice. We cannot avoid and we cannot hide that even we, as intellectuals, are a part of that game. In the analysis that Santiago Sierra makes of the biennale, in his sound-piece, among other things he counts which countries have a national pavilion in the Giardinni della Biennale, and which are outside. The countries in the Giardinni are the hegemonic countries. We are living in a world where it is very difficult to escape these neoliberal capitalist strategies. The biennales and the museums are a part of that.

AZ: Then, I suppose, the question is whether, since “they” use “you” or “us” for the production of some sort of value (because it is not strictly a case of promoting or selling works of art, but also of selling hotel rooms, paninis, espressos, water-taxi rides, etc.), are “you” or “we” also in a position to use “them” for our own ends?

RM: It is a David and Goliath fight. We are part of the game, but even if we are instrumentalized, we have to defend our territory of intellectual freedom and the possibility of acting critically, and we cannot allow the politicians or the sponsors to intervene or to create obstacles for us. I can maybe give you a little example: Illy Café, a sponsor of this show, proposed to have coffee machines and chairs throughout the exhibition. I rejected the proposal, of course, because from my point of view it was perverting the whole Arsenale into the performative space of a sponsor. I said that this was not acceptable for the artists, this was not acceptable for me, and we wouldn’t do it.

Then, my budget was cut — and the Illy Café coffee kiosks were back in. So, I had to suffer a lot, and I had to find myself some other support for the artists, but in that way I think I protected the minimum of dignity that an exhibition has to have. I can also tell you that when I went to the Basel Art Fair last year, in the Art Unlimited section, which looks very much like a biennale, I read the official statement there, and they were saying something like “Art Unlimited: An exhibition with no limits. No budget limits. No space limits. No curatorial limits.” This means that today, curators are no longer the people who open up the frontiers. We are the people that must create frontiers for the voracity of the market and the sponsors.

AZ: How do you think this situation is affecting artistic production? I feel that the prevalent idea is still that artists do what they do, as always, and the market, or the curators, they all come into the picture afterwards, after the artists have done what they do. Maybe, though, this situation affects what they do. Maybe some, like Santiago Sierra, react consciously to it, but it seems to me that most of them submit to how things are and they try to work with this situation.

RM: I think we all have to submit to a certain degree to the economic and social conditions of our time. The artists need the market to keep on living, to keep on selling. One problem occurs when the market, the galleries, the commercial institutions, the private collectors and even the museums work to oblige the artist to produce a certain kind of product. You know, if an artist becomes famous for doing something, then everybody wants this kind of product. Everybody wants a successful product. The market, however, has a positive side. I don’t remember which anthropologist it was who was saying that commerce is very positive, that it helps societies to develop. We cannot see things in black and white, the market is good or the market is bad. Everything is interactive.

AZ: Yes, I suppose commercialism in that sense comes a bit into what I am saying, but I am referring more to the ways the market has found to move previously “unmovable” products. For example, one orthodox analysis that one may encounter quite often is that an artistic production with projects in situ, or ongoing engagements with local societies, or quasi-activist performances in public spaces, is somehow anti-commercial. Nevertheless, it produces value. Even if we get to the point where there is no actual object at all, then we are still left with the persona of the artist. It seems that we are faced with a system of distribution that can move absolutely anything, and there is nothing an artist can do to subvert that, is there?

RM: I think it is very difficult to subvert anything. You can resist a little bit. Or you can try to subvert in other ways, I mean, I remember the work of an artist who was creating markets of interchange, where elementary interchange does not happen with money, but someone brings an object, and they take something else. So, there are certain ways to react — but the system is very strong.

AZ: In a book about Conceptual Art in the U.S. in the 1960s, I came across a statement by an executive of a company who was saying that just as businesses are looking for constant innovation in products and services, so contemporary artists are doing the same in art. The point is, more or less, that contemporary art provides a symbolic equivalent for a capitalist market. Would you say that is the case?

RM: I think there is a difference. Creating new thoughts, creating new ways of understanding reality is a way of going further. That is, of course, what I am interested in, and not simply to create novelty, or to create something new for this voracious market. Creating new ways of thinking is a way that can enable us to analyze and to criticize this society and these strategies, which oblige us all to follow a flux of production. There is a difference between intellectual innovation and consumerist innovation. So to the question if we can escape this logic of constant innovation that the neoliberal capitalist market upholds — I say again that we can resist. Most of the artists in my exhibition are not new or emerging, I have been working with them for the past ten years, I have followed their paths, and I think that they are innovative in a very honest and serious way. I do not see them as trying to satisfy the demands of the market, in fact some of them sell very badly. Giving shape to one’s thoughts is perhaps a value that the market doesn’t recognize, but maybe the context of a biennale still has a way to present this aspect of things.

AZ: In the last Venice Biennale, though, there was quite a break on your part with a lot of things that the biennale stands for. I mean, when Santiago Sierra bricks up the doorway to the Spanish pavilion and prohibits entry to all who do not hold a Spanish passport, there is a clear attempt to subvert what national representation — an important aspect of the Biennale’s identity — is all about. It was you who curated this show. And I seem to remember that the artistic director at the time, Francesco Bonami, was not pleased at all, in fact he was giving interviews saying that he hated everything about Santiago Sierra. Having done what you did in 2003, weren’t you at all nervous taking up the whole show in the Arsenale this year?

RM: No, why? I was more nervous about doing the Spanish pavilion than I was about doing the Arsenale. For the last 20 years I have been working in the field of international biennales, and I have been defending through my exhibitions a concept of internationality. Then, suddenly, I was confronted with my own nationality. But, in 2003, together with Sierra, we analyzed the idea of nationality, the model of sovereignty from the 19th century. When you come to the Venice Biennale, you have the illusion that all the countries live together, but still the hegemony of the United States or Great Britain is very much a reality. We thought that we could break the illusion by reinforcing the autonomy of one pavilion and saying: you cannot enter here. So, that made me feel nervous. When it was proposed to me to co-direct the whole Biennale with Maria de Corral, I was just sad that there was not enough time to develop a stronger project. I am happy with what I have done, but I think with more time I would have been able to accept all the invitations to travel to many other countries, to research the production in certain areas of the planet that I do not know. I couldn’t do that. I had to work with the background that I have from other biennales.

AZ: This illusion you mentioned — that all countries live together — is not something you tried to maintain in this biennale. Nevertheless, you did not make any moves as radical as that of the Spanish pavilion, did you?

RM: No, because I did not have the time to do it, and I did not have appropriate conditions. When I was the curator for the Spanish pavilion, the politicians in my country gave me total freedom. Here, I had very little time, and I also had the difficulty of working with a machine that is very bureaucratic, very slow, which eats up all your intellectual energy. When you want to get permission for something, you have to spend four months fighting every day. I thought that since the Venice Biennale has been going on for over 100 years, the machine would be well-oiled. But in many respects, it was as if the biennale was starting from zero. In a way, it is easier to do the Istanbul Biennale, because there is more anxiety, more passion.

AZ: Apart from the bureaucracy, did you have real political trouble?

RM: A little. But I think this is normal in all exhibitions. I am an ambitious curator, and I try to do difficult projects. There were at least two projects that were not realized, and at least for one of them, a project by Gregor Schneider [a five-story-tall black cube, modeled on the Ka’ba in Mecca, to be installed in the Paazzo San Marco], I was never told why. I was not allowed to talk to the responsible parties either in the city government or in the culture ministry. Had I been allowed to talk to them, I think I might have convinced them. But I was told by the biennale that the culture ministry would not allow it, and that was that. The artist and I felt a bit excluded from the negotiations. Biennial president Davide Croff told me to trust the biennale, and I said, ‘I will trust the Biennale, when I can see what the reasons are.’ I was not able to see.

AZ: Italy has quite a conservative government, one that is often criticized around the world. At the same time, the Venice Biennale is a valuable asset for Italy, a sort of cultural banner. Do you think Italian politicians were a bit unnerved that your exhibition is so politicized?

RM: Rocco Buttiglione, the culture minister, made reference to creating a scandal or a provocation, all of which shows that he is not very happy. But we are not trying to provoke anybody. The scandal and the provocation happen in reality, not in the artworks. Art is a mirror. I am not trying to create a scandal; I am just trying to show how artists think today. The scandal is outside, in the world.

AUGUSTINE ZENAKOS is an art critic who lives in Athens.

La entrada ARTNET, Nueva York, EEUU, 2 de Agosto, 2005 se publicó primero en Rosa Martínez - Independent Art Curator.

GIRL POWER
Romping on the Rialto

Venice Biennale. Jun 2nd 2005 | Venice | http://www.economist.com

ROSA MARTINEZ and María de Corral, the directors of this year’s Venice Biennale which opens on June 12th, are like stars from a Pedro Almodóvar film. Clever, stylish, funny and well-connected, the duo is juggling to complete the job at hand in record time, on a reduced budget and amidst a Byzantine bureaucracy. If they are not yet on the verge, it is only because this is business as usual at the Biennale.
After the 2003 event—dubbed death in Venice because of the crippling heat and chaotic artists’ installations—the 110-year-old art funfair has decided to restructure. Its new president, Davide Croff, a former banker, is trying to rationalise the event both financially (by encouraging private finance to supplement a dwindling public subsidy) and curatorially by creating a three-year plan in which the two Spanish women will be followed by a New Yorker, Robert Storr, in 2007.

Ms de Corral, a former director of the Reina Sofía museum and of the Fundación La Caixa collection in Barcelona, Spain’s most important contemporary art collection, likes to take the long view. Her exhibition in the labyrinthine Italian pavilion will present a series of “constellations” of contemporary artists, rather than a single dominant view of how art is now. “I am interested in highlighting the relation between artists of different generations, in ideas that emerge like fragments and sketches.” On entering, viewers will see a massive cast staircase by Rachel Whiteread, a British sculptor, and then a series of galleries showing emerging artists such as Jorge Macchi, an Argentine, mixed with works by Francis Bacon, Philip Guston and Antoni Tapies.

Ms Martínez, on the other hand, is the baroness of biennali, having made her name as a peripatetic curator of international contemporary art expos in her native Barcelona, Istanbul, Busan (South Korea) and, most recently, Moscow. A biennial exhibition has an obligation to test the present, to challenge it, she says. “It provides a temporary global agora, a place for encounters between people…a chance to create new kinds of neighbourhoods between artists and audiences.”
Ms Martínez’s domain is the Arsenale, the monumental Renaissance armoury that once supplied the Venetian navy and is now open only for the Biennale. Traditionally this is the space for the most avant-garde art, and Ms Martínez is like an inmate who has taken over the asylum. She believes in art’s power to transform the status quo. “It can subvert established systems, rather than reinforce them.”
Since the two were appointed last August, much has been made of the fact that they are the first women to have done the job and they have chosen a record number of female artists—more than a third of the 92 names whose work is appearing in their respective exhibitions. But the curators differ on whether this Biennale is a feminist event. Ms de Corral says it is not. “I do not have a deliberate agenda to include more women.” But she has devoted space to Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holzer. Although they are best known for the radical feminist works they made in the 1970s, Ms de Corral has chosen to emphasise their prophetic qualities by selecting some of their word-based works that criticise the abuse of power in the media. “In the 1960s and 1970s, feminist artists used their bodies to express ideas, but these two were the first to use their minds. Their work has been incredibly influential.”

Ms Martínez believes this Biennale is none other than a feminist statement. She has invited the Guerrilla Girls, a feminist artist’s collective, to perform, and is trying to include as many female artists as possible. “I believe in positive discrimination”, she says. “I wanted half of the artists to be female. But I couldn’t find enough because women artists have children, relationships, break-ups that slow down their careers. These things happen to male artists too but somehow their careers continue. Women cannot afford to relax.”

Ms Martínez titled her show “Always a Little Further”, inspired by her favourite Corto Maltese comic strip, in which the hero is always pushing the envelope and making one more journey. She has no qualms about injecting the pop culture of comics into an exhibition that also includes a Samuel Beckett play, Rem Koolhaas’s architecture and installations by esteemed contemporary artists like the nonagenarian Louise Bourgeois. “I like to mix art forms, generations, media, genders,” Ms Martínez says. Among the more radical works here is Joana Vasconcelos’s chandelier made of tampons, which, from a distance, look like shiny white glass. “It is pop and ironic, beautiful and rich in metaphor—and it uses industrial materials in new ways,” she says with a grin.

According to Ms Martínez, curators are more necessary than ever. Art and commerce have always been interdependent. But, she sees herself as a mediator who strikes a balance between the economic necessities of the market and the utopian dreams of artists. “Like a therapist or an editor, a curator is someone who finds meaning in the chaos of messages that surround us. My motto comes from the philosopher Gilles Deleuze—we have to think, create, resist.” His words are a good banner for the Venice Biennale.

La entrada The Economist, Londres, Reino Unido, Junio, 2005 se publicó primero en Rosa Martínez - Independent Art Curator.

La entrada EL PAÍS, Madrid, 14 de junio, 2003 se publicó primero en Rosa Martínez - Independent Art Curator.

In the publication Cream, you said, “The practice of being a curator gives you a chance to work in dialogue with the artist to coproduce a new reality and to relate together in a new context.” Can you elaborate?
When I organize an exhibition my first step is always to define a conceptual framework. The conceptual framework is based on a series of updated reflections on the problems of contemporary life and art that correspond to a larger cultural framework. I then start thinking about artists and specific works. I might select an existing piece that an artist has produced because it connects to my concept. In other cases, a work may be site-specific in relation to my proposal, a city, a context, or a situation; in still others, the artist may create an entirely new project. I like to create a common ground of understanding and, after exchanging ideas, to negotiate and feel a full communication and an enthusiastic agreement to develop the project.
Many curators work with a consistent nucleus of artists. How do you find new artists?
I am informed through many sources. My research is a continuous and open process. I travel, visit exhibitions, and read the magazines and catalogues for shows that I don’t see personally. I exchange ideas with other curators. Artists are a good resource about other artists. Philosophy and cultural theory are also components that fuel my interpretations. Artists who reflect the moment and who go beyond accepted conceptual and formal disciplines are my choice. For example, I believe painting has elaborated a historically important discourse and has strong meaning, yet in the context of a biennial, which looks beyond the present and into the future, the discipline of painting is unrenovated. Video and photography are renovating painting.
Can you define the role of the biennial vis-a-vis the museum?
Biennials are transgenerational and transnational and describe newly interconnected strategies. The discourse that separates is over, and while the barriers are toppling, the artist’s multiple modes of expression must be exhibited. Biennials are the most advanced arena for this expanded field precisely because they do not function like museums.Museums are temples for the preservation of memory where the art works are fetishized and displayed to create reverence and distance.
In Dennis Oppenheim’s 1971 work. Protection, he blocked the entrance to the Metropolitan Museum with guard dogs to question the sanctity of museums. Today, structures have changed and museums contain project rooms for contemporary installations that are less precious than what you describe.
I am an art historian. I appreciate all moments in art and I defend the existence of the museum. Museums are rarefied sometimes but they are also trying to renovate their strategies. Today, however, biennials are a context for the exploration and questioning of the synchronicity of the present on both a global and an intergenerational level, while also presenting an opportunity to break through the centers, like New York and London. The centers have the power, but those on the periphery have voices that contribute to a better understanding of our world.
The early model for the biennial was Venice. It was a Eurocentric, nationalistic model born of the 19th century, where each country had its own pavilion like an embassy ortrade show.
In 1980 Harald Szeemann questioned this territorial separation by founding this new section, the Aperto, for young artists at the Venice Biennale.Aperto artists represented their art, not their nation. However, the model was canceled by Jean Clair, a subsequent Biennale curator, who said, “The young ones, we don’t need them.” Szeemann, now in his mid-six-ties, is a perspicacious, generous, and fantastic man. It is fitting that he has been chosen to be the curator for the next two Venice Biennali, in1999 and 2001. He calls these “turn-of-the-millennium Biennali”: “/ApertoAll Over,” so the new spirit is clear.
It is also true that cultural politics employ biennials to enrich the local atmosphere by way of a tourist attraction. This is a way for a city to move into a new economy… not a bad thing, really.
There are so many places on the planet where international discourse can be questioned and improved. This widened dialogue doesn’t always have to happen in the centers; all places contribute to an understanding of certain realities today. Istanbul has 15 million inhabitants and Santa Fe has only 55,000, but the dialogue that has begun is a contribution and is necessary.
Santa Fe is a small, complicated city, rich in contrasts and symbolically close to the end of the world. Here, a naturally flamboyant landscape of mountains and high desert also contains the bleak reminder of the Manhattan Project.
Looking fora Place, my title for SITE Santa Fe,2 questions the place that art has in our societies today as well as the notion of finding one’s own place. How we conceive natural places like the ocean or the desert, how we experience our bodies, and how the politics of space are sexually organized are all elements of this. The answers are different in each locale, but they might have similarities, too. Santa Fe is a perfect environment in which to present an exhibition aimed at a fruitful dialogue with contemporary international art currents, and one that speaks to finding one’s own place. Sometimes it takes a long time to find one’s place. It took Walter De Maria five years to find the place to install Lightning Field [1971-77].
What do you extrapolate from the diversity of cultures in Santa Fe?
There are three communities not living together or interacting much: white Anglo-Saxon, Hispanic, and Native American. In this one place, all of the problemsof identity, struggles for land, thematic tourism, science, and nature arise.
Will the nature and culture dialogue be addressed in SITE Santa Fe?
I have been to Santa Fe with some of the artists, who have explored the place and thought of different projects. We have discussed them, trying to connect understandings and find a common direction. As the curator, I have an overview of the show’s content and appearance. I don’t think artists are just producers of things; they project their own understanding of the world and I respect that. I’ve invited Cai Guo Qiang, a Chinese artist who made a project in Hiroshima with gunpowder, balloons, and rings that float and then explode. He was rethinking the power of the atomic bomb and its negative potential. I thought that he could do a project in that direction because Los Alamos is so near, but when he felt this place he preferred to work on the spirituality of the landscape.
Santa Fe abounds with spiritual and animistic influences.
I have presented the artists with the possibility of confronting this. Now it’s their turn; they will react and give their interpretations of this spiritual balance or lack. Carl Michael von Hausswoiff, for example, is preparing a project called Operation of Spirit Communication (New Mexico Basic Minimalism Scene). In my conceptual framework I talk about our anxiety about space, how we live, where we live, our bodies and how we take care of them, how we dress and protect our identity with fashion, etc. I’m also interested in relational aesthetics, projects that ask for the participation of the spectator, and I hope some of the artists will go this route.
Speed and technology diminish our space on a psychic level. To include the spectator in a work also brings one back into oneself as a frame of reference.
Interaction is important. Cai Guo Qiang did a project of this type in Istanbul.3 He wanted to connect East and West, and as we did not have a big budget, he did it through a very delicate performance. He threw stones from both shores of the Bosporus, the European and the Asian, and he filmed that action. Then he installed two TV monitors in the left and right axes of one of our most beautiful venues, the Hagia Eireni Church. Each monitor showed his action on one side of the Bosporus and the stones crossed virtually from one monitor to the other, symbolically connecting East and West. He then invited the visitors to construct paper planes, to write a desire on them, and make them fly in the axis of the church connecting the entrance with the apse—representing the human and the divine. Atthe end of the show in the middle of the church there was a big, beautiful, white mountain with all the planes and all the desires of the visitors.
This participation, encompassing the viewer, is like an intervention that changes the equation of the activity, of object and subject, and expands the field of vision in unexpected ways.
Yes, the autonomy of the art work is put into question. When the spectators interpret the work they create it in another way. We no longer think in mirror aesthetics, with only two sides: active artist/passive spectator. Now the visions are prismatic. When I speak about prismatic views I do not mean only visual perspectives; I mean emotional, ethnic, symbolic, and others.
Many people come to live in Santa Fe to retreat from the problems of cities and global politics. It has become a Mecca for the rich from New York and Los Angeles.
Yes, it’s an existential focus; we look for a place to hide ourselves, or to develop ourselves in relation to others. People who go to Santa Fe go to find this landscape, this peace. The conceptual background that I propose to the artists is an instrument of reflection on all this.
The exposure to diverse ideas from all over can imply that main-reamismwW result. Instead, the separate and uniquetriumph. In New York there once was a melting-pot mentality; now the struggle is against its leveling effect. People want to maintain their difference.
Absolutely. This is what happens with globalization. It’s bringing back the extreme defense of ethnicity, of identity, so there’s this struggle: globalization against identity and vice versa. I think those are two sides of the same coin. And they establish a dialectic that has not been solved.
What is the male/female ratio of artists at Santa Fe?
There will be a balanced number of women and men.
Do you see a global feminist art emerging?
Not really. I see that there are more and more women producing art who are significant in the visible arena. Their contributions are expanding the field and the visions about the meaning of art, but I do not think they are acting with the militant radicalism of the 60s and 70s. They are very conscious about their problems, but they are not schematic and rigid; they are more fluid and wiser in a way due to the work that others did before. Miwa Yanagi is a Japanese photographer whose work is futuristic and melancholic at the same time. Her works are not feminist in the traditional sense; they present women as those who open the elevator doors in large commercial stores. Those kind, silent, beautiful, and submissive women are, for me, a critique of the passive role of women. In her videos, Mariko Mori fantasizes of being a goddess.
This sounds like a menacing, retro-futuristic role for a female cyborg.
Yet Mori’s work is more appealing as a meaningful spiritual negotiation.
Many women are trying to escape from the weight of patriarchal history, imagining for themselves a world without the gravity of History. Others, likeShirin Neshat, an artist from Iran, deconstruct the arena of the patriarchal model in Islam, where women are obliged to wear a veil in public spaces. From Portugal, Helena Almeida, who is 64 years old, develops a personal world in her photographs. She uses the house and its furniture to explore how women are tied to domestic space. Monica Bonvicini, from Italy, analyzes gender issues and the sexual politics of space. She also criticizes with pain how we metaphorically carry the house on our shoulders and how difficult it is to escape the domestic prison. In one of her works. Destroy She Said [ 1998], she took excerpts from films (directed by the big macho directors of the 50s and the 60s) where there is always a certain moment where sad, tired, or abandoned women lean against a wall, to gain support—as if they never could stand by themselves. Her piece for Santa Fe will be a book on the macho world of construction workers. She has been collecting answers to a very ironic and ideological questionnaire in various cities and she will present the results. Ghada Amer, from Egypt, analyzes the sexual connotations of abstract painting and in Santa Fe she will create a “Love Park,” trying to reflect and reinvent affective relations and the meaning of love in our lives. Charlene Teters is an extraordinary woman, a Native American artist. She is analyzing how Indians are represented in the mass media, in Disney’s portrayal of Pocahontas, for example, and how that representation mystifies and confronts the Native American reality.
Monica Bonvicini’s work references Gordon Matta-Clark’s famous acts of architectural rupture. Hers is a portrayal of violence done not only to the white cube, but also to the domestic environment. Perhaps this is interchangeable.
At the Istanbul Biennial, the decision to exhibit more women than men was an effortto balance the patriarchal tradition we all live under, which is particularly strong in Islamic cultures. Women are renovating the discourse of contemporary art and the critique of culture—to highlight this was a significant gesture. I think women artists of the 90s are more fluid than before, finding their way like weavers, adapting to the obstacles and circumventing them, not destroying them. They are trying to construct together with the male.
Many heterosexual men have taken a certain role in the art world that, among otherthings, celebrates adolescent machismo: Jason Rhoades, Paul McCarthy, John Bock, and Jonathan Meese, for example.
Yes, I believe this is a backlash. They are saying to all women, “You have already achieved what you wanted. You are equal now. You are free. But still look how powerful and nice we are.” But in fact men are terrified that women will steal their power, so they reclaim male power. I hesitate to use these words, but it is kind of a new fascism, a macho fascism. When men feel that their masculinity is in question, they feel a need to affirm it more and more. The fetish of the phallus is still there, the idea of creation as ejaculation—puff!, like with Pollock. It is a very male form of affirmation. I think some people become very aggressive when you say that you are even a little bit feminist, because they think you are going to bomb the established order.
There is no such thing as being a little bit feminist.
Maybe I should say a soft feminist. Women are more and more conscious of the unbalanced interchange that patriarchal society offers and hem. “Give me your sex, take care of my children, clean my house, and I will give you some money, security, and protection, but you have to obey and be good to me. And if you want to work, do it, but don’t forget your other duties.” When we say, “I see things in a different way,” the violence might start. But we should say to men, “Don’t worry, we still like you. We would only like to invent other models of affective relations and we want a better distribution of the domestic obligations and of the power relationships. We’re not going to cut your throat.”
It’s not the throat that they are concerned about.
Yes, of course. I think that women’s art is starting to be part of the river of art, whose present course is not militant.
Do you feel any discrimination as a female curator?
We should ask the Guerrilla Girls to count how many women are in the best curatorial posts. Catherine David was the first one in 50 years to direct documenta. I do not remember any women directing the Venice Biennale. Most of us are in peripheral situations, and I know that I have to work harder than my male colleagues, lama member of an association of curators called VOTI. This association has been accused of being a male club, even if a lot of women are members. But this is because boys are still more visible; we are more silent, more discrete. We are still looking for our own language, but we are still obliged to use the language of the Father.
What about the other fight, the one we women have with our mothers and the mother in ourselves?
Yes, that’s another issue. We also have to fight the possessive and vampiric power of mothers and our own desire to embrace everything. We have to control hysteria, which for me is just a protest of the body againstthe lack of power, the lack of voice. As for the tack of phallus (not the lack of penis), I laugh every time I think of our supposed “envy of the penis.” We have to start to be aware that Freud is not the only truth and that psychoanalysis is a very macho thing. In the Jungian sense, everyone has a masculine and feminine part, and we must integrate them. At the same time, we are obliged to deconstruct all the laws given to us by the fathers. So there is a lot of work to do, but we shouldn’t be afraid of anything!

02/1999

La entrada FOCI New York, EEUU 15 de septiembre, 2001 se publicó primero en Rosa Martínez - Independent Art Curator.

La entrada ART Seul, Corea 2000 se publicó primero en Rosa Martínez - Independent Art Curator.