Artists for Artists 5th Edition

States / In / States

The forthcoming Artists for Artists 5th edition States / In / States draws inspiration from artist Richard Bell’s seminal work Embassy (2013), a public space for imagining and articulating alternate futures and reflecting on stories of oppression. 

States / In / States will focus on the nexus between art practice and experimental forms of sovereignty. It engages with practices that examine themes including legal, economic, and cultural self-determination, speculative forms of governance, and the politics of displacement and dispossession. States In States workshops are led by international artists, including Richard Bell, and will be accompanied by a suite of lectures.

Workshops Dates: 15-19 December 2022

ADVISING ARTISTS

Artists for Artists is very excited to introduce Richard Bell, Tania Bruguera, and Pinar Ogrenci as Advising Artists for its 5th edition States / In / States!

Richard BELL

Richard Bell lives and works in Brisbane, Australia. He works across a variety of media, including painting, installation, performance, and video. One of Australia’s most significant artists, Bell’s work explores the complex artistic and political problems of Western, colonial, and Indigenous art production. Richard grew out of a generation of Aboriginal activists and has remained committed to the politics of Aboriginal emancipation and self-determination. 

In 2023 Bell will be presenting his major work, Embassy (2013–ongoing), at Tate Modern, London. He is currently on display at the Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Torino, Italy, with a solo project conceived as part of ESPRESSIONI CON FRAZIONI and will be exhibiting a new body of work for RELINKING at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven.

Tania BRUGUERA

An installation and performance artist, Tania Bruguera focuses on the ways in which art can be applied to everyday political life. Focusing on the transformation of affect into political effectiveness, Bruguera’s long-term projects have involved profound interventions on the institutional structure of collective memory, education, and politics. As a result of her artistic actions and activism, Bruguera has been arrested and jailed several times.

Bruguera is the founder and director of Cátedra Arte de Conducta (Behavior Art School), the first performance studies program in Latin America. Her work has been exhibited at documenta 11, the Guggenheim Museum, and Tate Modern and also at the Bienal Iberoamericana de Arquitectura y Urbanismo, the Gwangju Biennale, the Istanbul Biennial, and Shanghai Biennale. Her work is in the permanent collections of many institutions around the world, including the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Habana, and the Museum of Modern Art, in New York.

Pinar OGRENCI

Artist and filmmaker Pınar Öğrenci (1973, Van, Turkey) lives in Berlin. Drawing on her background in architecture, Öğrenci’s work is characterised by poetic and experiential video-based work and installations that accumulate traces of ‘material culture’ related to forced displacement. Öğrenci’s works are decolonial and feminist readings situated at the intersection of social, political and anthropological research, and everydat human stories that follow agents of migration such as war, state violence, collective movements, as well as industrial and urban development projects. While transforming the visual and audio documents she archives by detaching them from their contexts, Öğrenci makes relational connections between different cultures, spaces, and time periods as well as architecture, literature, and history.

Pinar’s works have been exhibited widely at museums and art institutions, including documenta fifteen 2022 in Kassel, 3rd Art Encounters Biennial (2019), 7th Sinop Biennial (2019), 12th Gwangju Biennial (2018), 6th Athens Biennial (2018), the Istanbul off-site project for Sharjah Biennial13 (2017); MAXXI Museum, Rome, 2015-6; and SALT Galata, Istanbul (2015-6).

The States In States edition is generously supported by Simon Mordant AO.

Workshop Structure

AfA Workshops consist of small-scale working groups and a suite of lectures. A total of 10 Participating Artists will be invited to participate in States In States. These Participating Artists will attend three workshops led by the Advising Artists.

Lecture / Workshop Format:

In workshops, each Participating Artist presents a proposal/project that relates to the theme of each edition (for example, artists can present a new proposal/idea or previous projects). During workshops presented via Zoom, each Participating Artist will receive detailed feedback from Advising Artists and their peers. Each Participating Artist will have access to all lectures presented by Advising Artists.

The Artists for Artists Masterclass is an open pedagogical platform that facilitates a direct connection between established artists and those in their early career stages. International artists leading previous AfA editions include Megan Cope,  Decolonize this Place (Amin Husain and Nitasha Dhillon), Noah Fischer, Terike Haapoja, Jeanne van Heeswijk, Ahmet Ogut, Maria Papadimitriou, Vivien Sansour, Gregory Sholette, Stefanos Tsivopoulos, and Dmitry Vilensky.