“I think it is important to be here and encourage the younger generations to dare.
Now is the moment in which many racialized artists in the world agree on this point of visibility and we have to take advantage of it,” says Agnes Essonti Luque (Barcelona, 1996).
The plastic artist, daughter of a Cameroonian father and an Andalusian mother (from Córdoba), speaks from one of the rooms of La Casa Encendida in Madrid, while the collective exhibition Generation 2024 opens.
Identity, memory and community of a generation with diverse roots born in the nineties
.
Essonti explains that it matters little if what is sought with an exhibition like this is a “representation at the Benetton level”, and encourages other children of immigrants to “occupy all possible spaces”, since there were previous artistic references who “did not “They have had the places of representation” that they can access now.
He cites, for example, “a generation of Equatorial Guineans who have been producing art here, but who have not been able to be in La Casa Encendida or the Reina Sofía.”
One of the works in the exhibition 'Generation 2024. Identity, memory and community of a generation with diverse roots born in the nineties'.Juan Naharro
The Generations call of the Montemadrid Foundation celebrates its 24th edition with this exhibition, as a platform dedicated to current art, with the purpose of allowing emerging authors to make themselves known to patrons, the public and critics.
In this edition, which received nearly 500 nominations, the works of eight creators were chosen, in which the experience of diasporas, memory and the colonial, the formation of identity and community ties are some of the common themes .
These discourses are given in multiple formats, among which installations that combine painting, sculpture and audiovisual records predominate.
The jury highlights the value of “a highly personal and emotional reflection” on identities, which, even when they are the “result of controversial historical processes,” can give rise to “the development of physical and territorial community spaces, on the one hand, and social, emotional and cultural, on the other.”
The chosen projects are:
When I was little, they made me nostalgic by the spoonful
, by Agnes Essonti Luque;
Amparo
, by An Wei (Madrid, 1990);
View from an eagle's flight
, by Daniel De La Barra (Lima, 1992);
At the end of your hair,
by Irati Inoriza (Balmaseda, Vizcaya, 1992);
Ukemi Ushiro Ukemi
, by Milena Rossignoli (Quito, 1990);
Catch the living manners as they rise
, by Raúl Silva (Lima, 1991);
Dialogues 2023
, by Salem Amar (Barcelona, 1999) and
Succulentbonds
/
lazossuculentos
, by Weixin Quek Chong (Singapore, 1988).
One of the works in the La Casa Encendida exhibition.Juan Naharro
Lavapiés, Hospitalet, Singapore
Essonti is one of the active artists who clearly expresses her desire not to waste opportunities to disseminate her works.
On this occasion, she presents a work in which she displays photos taken by herself in Cameroon, her father's country, texts from the memories of a girl growing up in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, interjected with stories from other people and even elements of fiction that allows it to expand.
The most striking thing about the installation is the carpet made in collaboration with the Top Manta union (street vendors in Barcelona): “We sewed it together in their workshop, and I have used different objects that are metaphors of our lives and the processes that affect us , such as migration, extractivism, colonialism and the spiritual universe.”
Asked about the notion of identity, the artist indicates that, in her understanding, it is “something in a constant flow.”
In fact, she clarifies, she has defined herself in different ways, “as an Afro-Spanish woman or a woman from the Manyu ethnic group (my father's) or, simply, a Spanish woman.”
Therein lies, in her opinion, “the richness of life”, in “being able to play with identity and explain ourselves differently at every moment.”
For his part, An Wei, an artist who was born in Madrid and who then spent several years in China before returning to his city of birth, assumes himself without conflict as part of the group of the second generation (that of the children) of immigrants. in Spain.
In this case, Lavapiés marks the origin of the sculpture he presents, called
Amparo
after one of the streets that “structure this neighborhood with the character of travelers, immigrant communities and new generations” that have been arriving.
It is a “staircase, with the fragmentation that characterizes the neighborhood and the relationships.”
Another artist of Asian descent, Weixin Quek Chong, who arrived in Madrid from Singapore about a decade ago, shows sculptures in La Casa Encendida about the “succulent ties” that link her to her place of origin.
Her work is made of “nests” (intertwined algae and coated in resin) and sheets of natural latex, since “this material is the blood (or juice) of rubber trees” from plantations where her own workers worked. grandparents.
Weixin explains that the rubber tree (
Hevea brasiliensis
) is a plant native to Brazil, from whose sap latex is obtained, a precious material for industrial exploitation, also in the world of fashion and fetishism, because it adheres to the leather like no other fabric.
It was “one of the first export products of Malaysia and Singapore, (from the jungles of Southeast Asia), at the initiative of the British, who wanted to compete with the South American rubber market.”
Regarding the possibility of seeing the place of origin with new perspectives, the Singaporean artist warns that, “sometimes, it is difficult to know things about your original context if you don't leave there.”
And she adds: “I have become aware of elements that were previously invisible (or normal) to me, such as the weather, which is an intense bodily experience, or communal dynamics and aesthetics.”
When asked about the different community practices to which he alludes, he points out that “the sense of space is very different in Singapore,” since “there is little private space, you are always surrounded by a lot of people, on the move, and “You can sometimes be very isolated.”
Instead, he asserts, “here there is more of a feeling that it is possible to have a private place as an individual.”
From the port of Callao to the Amazon
Among the arrivals from Latin America, it is worth highlighting the work of two Peruvian artists.
Daniel de la Barra landed in Europe at the age of 18 to “look for a life,” as he defined it at 31. His installation
View as an Eagle's Flight
stands out for the dark red of a large triptych in which De La Barra satirizes extractivism. current, through a reinterpretation of
Lunch on the Grass
, by Édouard Manet, with “the manufacturers of all the transgenic seeds in the world” as central figures, as he himself details.
The artists participating in the exhibition, on January 29 in Madrid.
Juan Naharro
“Corporations have faces, why not show them,” he emphasizes.
In the painting, which also, in his words, recalls the style of Bruegel's catastrophic scenes
The Elder
,
a tractor-trailer is shown in front of the European Parliament and the landscapes that endure the fumigations.
He talks about the poisoning of the soil by pesticides and “the revenge of the yellow-headed chief,” a South American bird that, in his painting, “defecates on the heads of the main manufacturers of animal feed, from the soybeans that deforest the Amazon.” .
In his work “there is no linear thinking, in the manner of the indigenous cosmogony, where past, present and future always coexist,” says the painter who, as a child, drew caricatures of politicians.
In front of the triptych, a screen reproduces the “reissue of a Francoist film from the year 41, in which agrarian fascism was propagated”, as defined by the artist, since “the feeling of the peasant and the sense of identity of a nation, nourishing itself on the ideals of romanticism, to remake an empire.”
The audio of the original film remains intact, with the encouragement of agricultural production “to feed the soldiers”, while the images are replaced with those of visits to the hundreds of towns founded during the Franco dictatorship, to “understand how they breathe those historical ghosts in the present,” he concludes.
Meanwhile, Raúl Silva presents a project linked to the commercial history of Peru in the 19th century, coinciding with its first years of independence.
The starting point is the export of bird guano from the Chincha Islands (on the Pacific coast) to Anglo-Saxon countries.
As the feces of this local bird called guanay (
Leucocarbo bougainvillii
) contain a high content of nitrogen and phosphorus, the British—consignees of the islands—were in charge of its distribution as fertilizer, paying a percentage to the country of origin.
Within this framework, the first railway line in South America was built (inaugurated in 1851), which connects the capital with the port of El Callao.
“This transportation line, financed with guano money, weaves this first link between the country and the colonial powers of the world, through something that is produced in the cycle of nature and that feeds the industry,” says Silva.
This connection leads the artist to think about the other networks that technological systems and computer vectors weave, and how the speed of information accelerates.
His creation is based on these reflections to capture them in oil painting and moving images.
His idea is to “represent the alleged infinity of the growth of capitalism in contrast to the limitation of the material.”
The jury for this edition of
Generaciones
included Carla Acevedo Yates, from the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago;
João Mourão, director of the Arquipélago Centro de Artes Contemporâneas;
Luís Silva, director of the Kunsthalle Lissabon, Lisbon, and Mabel Tapia, former deputy director of the Reina Sofía National Art Center Museum.
Each of the selected projects has received 10,000 euros in production expenses and fees.
The exhibition
Generation 2024. Identity, memory and community of a generation with diverse roots born in the nineties
will be open to the public until April 21 at La Casa Encendida in Madrid.
You can follow
Planeta Futuro
on
X
,
,
and
TikTok
and subscribe
to our newsletter
here
.