LABoral will produce three projects by Eduardo Guerra, Lorena Lozano and Ricardo Nascimento & Ebru Kurbak
The three artists were selected in the call for proposals by the Art Centre´s Projects Office, which received proposals from 51 artists from all over the world
An image of the HeLA cells, on which is based the Lorena Lozanos's work. Photo: Courtesy of the artist
Two projects by Asturian artists Eduardo Guerra -Hitos, ya nadie muere en casa [Landmarks, No-one Dies At Home Anymore]-, Lorena Lozano –Danza infinita. Homenaje a Henrietta Lacks [Infinite Dance. A Tribute to Henrietta Lacks]- and a third -Feather Tales II- by artist duo Ricardo Nascimento (Brazil) and Ebru Kurbak (Turkey), will be produced by LABoral and subsequently shown throughout this year and 2012 in the “Sala de Columnas” room at the Centre of Art and Industrial Creation in Gijón.
The projects have been chosen as the winners of the “Oficina de Proyectos” [Projects Office] call, carried out by LABoral, which includes the selection of two proposals by those artists who are Asturian or resident in Asturias and another one aimed at creators of any nationality who are interested in taking up artistic residency for two months at the Centre.
Hitos, ya nadie muere en casa by Eduardo Guerra aims to reflect places that die in the surroundings of their own beauty: solitary trees in the midst of an asphalt whirlpool, houses in the middle of a growing forest … the changing world and how they change the sound that accompanies them. To achieve this, the artist creates an installation with ten objects, each one formed by a container, which has a landmark inside, an unidentified place because of its photographic association, linked up with an audio track in vinyl format, played on an auto-amplified record player.
In this way, Eduardo Guerra aims to combine sound and image in a unique art work, proposing a different approach to the typical filmed piece. The photographs will be realised using a 4x5 plate camera in analogical format. For the sound tracks, the artist will use the recordings from the photographed surroundings themselves or re-use the available elements and sound archive at LABoral. Hitos, ya nadie muere en casa will be exhibited in the Sala de Columnas between 14th October 2011 and 16th January 2012
Eduardo Guerra (Gijón, 1973) is a photographer, illustrator, designer and graphic editor. He graduated in Engraving and Printing Techniques at the Escuela de Artes y Oficios [Applied Arts School] in Oviedo. He has also undertaken various courses and workshops, specialising in silk screen print and lithography, in which he is a trainer, stamper and assessor… In addition to his professional activity, which he currently performs in his workshop Maldita Impresión, he has also carried out artistic work linked mainly to the fields of graphic and photographic work, although not without abandoning the intervening character of them. Also involved in various exhibitions in the Museo de Bellas Artes of Asturias, several editions of the Muestra de Artes Plásticas, Asturias, and in galleries including Espacio Líquido. He has won grants and competitions among which the Grant for Production by the Fundación Municipal de Cultura del Ayuntamiento in Gijón [the Municipal Foundation for Culture of Gijón City Council], Explum International Contemporary Art Contest and AlNorte Arte Contemporáneo, Asturias, are worth mentioning.
(http://cargocollective.com/eduardoguerra)
The artist and researcher Lorena Lozano will develop an audiovisual and performative project: Danza infinita. Homenaje a Henrietta Lacks [Infinite Dance. A tribute to Henrietta Lacks], with which she intends to open reflection about the politics, rights and property of the body and the advances of medical and biological research while, at the same time, paying tribute to Henrietta Lacks. The HeLa cells come from the cervical carcinoma of Henrietta Lacks and were the first human cells from which a permanent cellular line was established in 1951. Since that time they have been widely used in research and in biomedical research laboratories worldwide. This performative video-installation will be shown from 10th February and 14th May 2012.
Lorena Lozano (Gijón, 1975) graduated in Biology from the University of Oviedo in Asturias (1998) and in Environmental Art, Glasgow School of Art (Scotland, 2007). Working in the areas of artistic creation as a critical and collaborative research process connecting knowledge and artistic, scientific and educational methodologies. She has taken part in environmental regeneration and community projects in Scotland and also in programmes involving citizen participation and landscape interpretation with the collectives Sitesize and Idensitat in Catalonia. She is a member of the ecoLAB team at LABoral Centro de Arte and the Agencia Paisaje collective. (www.lorenalozano.net/)
Feather Tales II, by Ricardo Nascimento and Ebru Kurbak, will be exhibited in the Sala de Columnas room at LABoral from 5th October 2012 until January in 2013. This is a work in progress by two artists using clothing items as a form of communication and protection, placing them at the core of research work which links design and fashion. Based on the study of different technical, aesthetic and material possibilities, the Brazilian-Turkish artist duo develop a series of dynamic textile surfaces which make the reflexes from electromagnetic fields visible.
At LABoral they will continue with the work developed during an artistic residency in March of this year at La Gaîté Lyrique, Paris, in order to create a large interactive installation in which 180 feathers, covering the whole of the Sala de Columnas, react upon detecting electromagnetic waves from a mobile telephone.
Ricardo Nascimento (São Paulo, 1977) graduated from the Linz University of Art and Industrial, Austria. He is an artist and researcher in the field of new media and interactive art. His work is centred on the relationships between the human body and its surroundings, the development of interfaces and autonomous systems for interactive installations and mobile devices. In 2006, he set up Popkalab –a platform for developing projects on fashion, design and technology projection- in Rotterdam (the Netherlands) and Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). His work has been presented at festivals and spaces such as ArsElectronica, File, Social Fabrics, ACE and ARTECH, among others. (www.popkalab.com/th.html)
Ebru Kurbak (Izmir, Turkey) studied architecture at the Technical University of Istanbul. She is a lecturer in the Department of space&designstrategies at the Linz University of Art and Industrial Design, Austria. Since 2007 she has worked on the development of wearable interfaces aiming to understand the transformation in our daily actions in a world conditioned by the development and multiplicity of new technologies. Her work has been shown at the Ars Electronica Festival, the Siggraph Festival, File Festival, Portable Art, Ich-Maschine and CStem, among others. (www.ebrukurbak.net/)
All of these were selected out of the 51 proposals submitted to LABoral’s Projects Office proposal call by a jury presided over by LABoral Director, Rosina Gómez-Baeza, and formed by Benjamin Weil, Chief Curator at LABoral; Ana Botella Díez del Corral, Head of Exhibitions at LABoral; Pedro Soler, Head of Plataforma Cero at LABoral; Jaime Luis Martín, Director of Castrillón Municipal Patronage of Cultural Activities and art critic; and María del Carmen Carrón, writer and independent curator, Quito.
The jury highlighted the artistic value of the selected proposals, the use of new technologies and their correspondence in some of LABoral’s work areas which, following the criteria of the call, should have a bearing on education, free culture, communities, audiovisual communication, art and culture, ecology and sustainability, mobile culture, digital games and cartography.
In accordance with the rules of the call, the two Asturian artists will receive fees amounting to 1,500 euros and an additional 6,000 euros for the production of their proposed work; in the case of Ricardo Nascimento and Ebru Kurbak, a further 2,000 euros will be awarded, in addition to the 6,000 euros for the production of their work, for payment of fees and other expenses derived during their two-month residency at the Centre of Art and Industrial Creation where they will develop Feather Tales II.
