E.M.M.A., in collaboration with Swimming Pool, is pleased to present solo projects by Lorenzo Sandoval and Gina Folly realized in the context of the annual roaming program of artistic research In Her Place. This year the program has started in Tangier with a four-days communal gathering that reunites various artists, researchers, curators and citizens to study collectively notions of displacement and the unknown аs we face these in everyday life. The gathering aims to generate a common climate of knowledge derived form different perspectives and practices, to develop connections and networks between the people and the territory where the encounter takes place, and to imagine collectively beforehand what will be done after.
During their residencies in Sofia, Folly and Sandoval have worked around merchandising and souvenirs as those objects that articulate intrinsic values of past and present societies. Interested in how our social behavior is being determined through both intimate and public exposure, Gina Folly transforms objects and symbols of this culture. At the entrance of the space, one love song is transmitted by the lamp through the intermittency of the light with no sound. Inside, the TRAP series encompasses five fruit boxes that carry desires, beauty, fortune and other rubbish from capitalism while becoming furniture that shapes our daily environment.
Shadow Writing (Taking a Fragment of A Mountain) n.II by Lorenzo Sandoval is a group of textile compositions based on fragmentary elements of Peruvian textiles. Using abstract components, it questions his own position – reflecting on the avant-garde tradition as well – by introducing the difficulties to fully access to the Peruvian cosmogony. In such way, Sandoval discusses souvenirs as both archaeological carriers and commodification of culture in the artist’s hands. The pieces are presented within a sculptural display that also incorporates elements related to digital cultures, which follows the artist’s recent research on the relationship between the histories of textiles and computation.
The exhibition was preceded by a dinner and conversation with artists Gina Folly and Lorenzo Sandoval as well as curators Veronica Valentini (E.M.M.A.) and Viktoria Draganova (Swimming Pool, Sofia) at Swimming Pool. The dinner served as a conceptual, spacial and relational arrangement as well as a vehicle to introduce the artistic and curatorial practices of the invited, focusing on the question how we create, organize and relate to collective space. Both artists participate in artistic collectives and run project spaces. Since 2013, Gina co-organizes Taylor Macklin in Zurich. Lorenzo co-founded The Institute for Endotic Research – TIER, which is now located in Berlin. He is also part of the Miracle Workers Collective representing Finland in the Venice Biennale 2019. Also, “In Her Space”, a roaming program run by E.M.M.A. and curator Veronica Valentini, and the reason why Lorenzo and Gina are in Sofia, is moved by the idea to create free-learning moments through encountering new contexts and contents.
Gina Folly lives and works in Basel and Paris. Her work investigates the effects of political, cultural and social changes on everyday realities, habits and self-conceptions of the individual. The source from which her practice draws is the interaction between private and public spaces. Presently, her research plays around the concept of manipulation and seduction within the sphere of daily life. As a result, everyday objects and situations play a crucial role in her works as motifs or materials, often searching for a confrontation between humans and their surroundings. These relations and exchanges are emphasized in the way Folly uses, alters and mixes industrial production processes with artisanal or even homemade techniques.
Lorenzo Sandoval works as an artist and curator and produces spatial devices that work as narrative machines. He is part of Miracle Workers Collective representing Finland in the Venice Biennale 2019. Since 2015, he runs The Institute for Endotic Research (together with Benjamin Busch), which opened in 2018 as a venue in Berlin. His recent research deals with divergent genealogies of the connections between image production, textile making and computation.
E.M.M.A works as a self-organized initiative which operates on an international scale providing free learning moments to its guests and publics and starting the annual agenda with an encounter among an ensemble of guests temporally gathered in picked venues. Context (hosting structure and territory) and content (common studies) are taken into account for the construction of the meaning of the encounter itself whose outcomes will inform the program of residencies and exhibitions that has to come elsewhere. This time, the inaugural communal gathering of the annual program took place in Tangier with In Her Place, a four-days program that open-up a space for the sharing of praxis, knowledge, reflection and collective imagination through transdisciplinary studies that cross local history, moroccan feminism, urban and citizens practices, pedagogical and cooperative actions, computation and textile/writing, artificial intelligence, linguistic varieties and social behaviour. In addition to residencies and presentations in Sofia and Bogota, a tetralogy publication with the contributions of all participants will complete the ongoing exploration. E.M.M.A is a non-profit, collaborative and curatorial organization, born in Spain in 2016 from the desire to support and share artistic production’s knowledges and practices. While learning, creating and offering residential opportunities to artists and other cultural producers, E.M.M.A is thought as a place for experimentations, social exchanges and collective experiences that encourages dialogue and exploration in the arts through diverse forms of presences. E.M.M.A. and the annual roaming program of artistic research is conceived and curated by Veronica Valentini and developed & co-produced in partnership with a multiplicity of associates (artists, curators, researchers, individuals, nonprofit organizations and institutions) coming from various areas of society. In addition, since 2018 E.M.M.A. is one of the art organisations in charge to develop in Spain Concomitentes (Nouveaux Commanditaires/New Patrons) art citizens project supported by the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation (Madrid).
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