WHERE I LIVE at the gallery
This show builds on an exploration of the complex questions “Where is home?”, “Where do I belong?”, “How do places/spaces define us?”, was the focus of a series of interviews previously carried out in London by the Transtango collective, as part of their nomadic transdisciplinary performance of the same name, which inspired the current selection. Founded in 2006 by Argentinean Patricia Bossio and supported by the Arts Council of England, Transtango was the artistic collective which, in 2020, became Art Ubicua, the multidisciplinary group at the core of this exhibition. Where I live, in the exhibition format we are proposing here, is the result of collective exchanges and curatorial work carried out by various members of Art Ubicua. It aims to bring to the gallery space those discussions on where and how we live when we are displaced from our familiar habitat that explored in the live performances by Transtango, and thus to take them to a new level.
Asafe Ghalib, Photography
Migrant Queer
Asafe creates a unique space by portraying the subjects during the photoshoot where they learn from each other. As the artist explains, this “is a collective effort to reshape the narrative surrounding our community and challenge the misconceptions that have perpetuated its misrepresentation”. Through this visual storytelling, they say, “I invite viewers to embark on this journey with me, immersing themselves in the complexities and triumphs of our lives”. In this sense, the exhibition explores new layers of feelings of belonging and displacement, drawing into play both the bodies we inhabit and the clothes that socially de/codify them.
Stills taken from the film Two Journeys (2009), by Adam Finch and Patricia Bossio, freeze in time the moments when we are transformed by others, as well as by the overwhelming immensity of a new architectural territory. Juxtaposed with those, Ghalib’s photograph of his hometown opens up a new reading of Transtango’s actions.
A series of talking-head interviews are projected, filling the space with their voices and tales of the conflicting identity traits arising from their experiences of displacement. This particular video was co-directed by Henry Singer, one of Britain’s most acclaimed documentary filmmakers, and Anna Price, a renowned film editor. While in the live Where I Live performance the pace of this audio-visual piece followed the rhythm, space and corporeality of the musicians and dancers, in the white cube of the gallery space the stories and physical presence of those portrayed acquire a more palpable dimension. They do not talk to an audience, but to us as individuals more directly; interacting in the same space, sharing a semantic dimension.
Gabriela Golder ,video artist
Marcelo Nisinman, composer
A new commissioned audiovisual work based on part of the original Transtango contemporary tango piece Pourquoi tu te lèves? [Why Do You Rise?] written by composer Marcelo Nisinman and performed by him (bandoneon), Tim Garland (sax, flute, clarinet), Eduardo Vassallo (cello), and John Turville (piano). The result is a video called El viento arrasa y se va [The Wind Destroys and Sweeps Away], by Gabriela Golder and Abel Cassanelli, members of Continente, the Research Centre in Audiovisual Arts at the Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero (Buenos Aires, Argentina). This piece offers a particular view on contemporary migratory flows and their displaced conditions, inviting us to experience territories in constant transformation.
El viento arrasa y se va (The Wind Destroys and Sweeps Away) by Gabriela Golder / Marcelo Nisinman
Video inspired by Pourquoi tu te lèves? Music composed by Marcelo Nisinman, performed by Nisinman (bandoneon), Tim Garland (sax, flute, clarinet), Eduardo Vassallo (cello), John Turville (piano), Mark Goodchild (bass).
A video by Gabriela Golder produced by Abel Cassanelli
