The Museo Tamayo director talks psychedelia, dreams, and desires

Curator Magalí Arriola maps her journey through 'OVR: Portals'

<p>登入並訂閱巴塞爾藝術展專題故事</p>

<p><strong>The planet</strong></p><p><strong></strong></p><p>The planet is some 640 light years away, in a constellation named Pisces. One of its sides is constantly exposed to the sun, while the other lives in permanent darkness. The day side’s temperatures reach as high as 2,400C, vaporizing all metals. These are then carried by strong winds to the planet’s cooler night side, where they condense into iron droplets.</p><p><strong>The artist</strong></p><p><strong></strong></p><p><a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/10758/Tania-P%C3%A9rez-C%C3%B3rdova" target="_blank">Tania Pérez Córdova</a>’s work <em style="background-color: initial;">Iron Rain </em>(2020) is a graphite container filled with solidified metal drops. The Mexico City-based artist explores the thresholds that connect everyday reality with emotions, scientific knowledge, and imaginary spaces. Presented by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/12669/Tina-Kim-Gallery" target="_blank">Tina Kim Gallery</a>, her work expands the nature of sculpture by creating perceptual lapses and open-ended storytelling. Pérez Córdova’s many crossing paths, conceptual setups, and mismatched pairs all point toward the possibility of an encounter, she says, a notion that is crucial to ‘OVR: Portals’.</p>

<p><a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1054/A-Gentil-Carioca" target="_blank">A Gentil Carioca</a>’s OVR, entitled ‘Tempo’, plays with our capacity to decode and relate to distinct historical periods<em style="background-color: initial;">.</em>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/17167/Jo%C3%A3o-Mod%C3%A9" target="_blank">João Modé</a>’s practice reassesses early-20th-century Constructivism from a humane and intimate perspective – what he calls ‘affective Constructivism.’ He transforms the Brazilian tradition of geometric abstraction by incorporating personal objects such as handkerchiefs, tablecloths, or bedsheets into his sewn or embroidered compositions. Modé’s work is presented in conversation with&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/search?q=Laura%20Lima" target="_blank">Laura Lima</a>’s series ‘Ouro Flex<em style="background-color: initial;">í</em>vel’ (2005–), for which the artist draws with a golden pen over printed reproductions of paintings from the 16th to 19th centuries, torn from the books in her library. These drawings embody her concept of ‘ornamental philosophy,’ whose aim is to subvert our common assumptions about the redundant and superfluous. As in much of her practice, Lima distorts our perception by transposing the different protagonists of her works – be they art, animals, or human bodies – to unanticipated contexts, thus provoking unexpected experiences.</p>

<p>Art’s potential as a space of self-determination and agency is further explored through the lens of community and craft in <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/11570/I-Lann-Yee">Yee I-Lann</a> and her collaborators’ presentation at <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1440/Silverlens">Silverlens</a>. Yee was born in Kota Kinabalu, Borneo; she moved back there from Kuala Lumpur in 2016/17, and has since been working with local weavers on <em style="background-color: initial;">tikars</em>, the multifunctional bamboo mats that are used across Southeast Asia. The humble <em style="background-color: initial;">tikar</em> embodies a tradition shared by sea-based communities in Borneo, undocumented migrants, and stateless Indigenous people who traditionally work the land. <em style="background-color: initial;">TANAHAIRKU #003 </em>(with weaving by S. Narty Raitom, Julia Ginasius, and Julitah Kulinting) (2021) is woven with the Malay/Indonesian words <em style="background-color: initial;">tanah </em>(land) and <em style="background-color: initial;">air</em> (water/sea) to make up <em style="background-color: initial;">tanahair</em> (homeland). These words thus bridge a historical boundary between two communities. Yee and her collaborators extend the democratic and communal spirit of the <em style="background-color: initial;">tikar</em> beyond the confines of the mat, prompting us to reconsider the notions of home, distance, and mutual exchange in a collective gesture of place-making.</p>

<p><strong>The new beginning</strong></p><p><strong></strong></p><p>In Ziółkowski’s <em style="background-color: initial;">The Endless Beginning </em>(2020), a splayed female figure is painted over a tridimensional rock. She is giving birth to an infinite string of screaming creatures that are attached by a thorny umbilical cord. The painting resonates with&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/7870/Camille-Henrot" target="_blank">Camille Henrot</a>’s works from the series ‘System of Attachment’, presented in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1215/kamel-mennour" target="_blank">Kamel Mennour</a>’s OVR, ‘A Political Animal’<em style="background-color: initial;">.</em> Works such as <em style="background-color: initial;">Wet Job</em> (2020) and <em style="background-color: initial;">Story of a Substitute </em>(2020) address bonding bodies and acknowledge the physical and emotional attachment inherent in motherhood, as well as the burden of its cultural and political dimensions. Henrot explores what she calls the ‘perversity of care’ in the relationship between individual experience and collective behavior, pointing to the threshold between being one and breaking into another person. Her worldly concerns might make one realize that we are indeed political animals – that is, creatures whose instincts affect public life and, conversely, whose social conduct and collective actions have an indelible effect on the natural world. However, to paraphrase the title of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/7779/Latifa-Echakhch" target="_blank">Latifa Echakhch</a>’s maze-like ink painting of 2019, also on show in Kamel Mennour’s OVR, if we realize that when we ‘Turn to the right and then walk five steps before turning to the left, the wind [still] blows through the grass’ on our planet, we should be grateful that we can experience it as living proof of its resilience.</p>

<p><strong>Job Koelewijn</strong>’sworks at <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/3658/Galerie-Fons-Welters">Galerie Fons Welters</a> are part of an ongoing project that began in 2006. Every day, the artist reads aloud for 45 minutes from books whose subjects range from philosophy and art history to literature and science. The books and resulting recordings are displayed in specially made panels hosting stacks of cassette tapes, as in <em style="background-color: initial;">Relief 20 Nov 2015 - 20 Jul 2017 </em>(2015–20). As technology moved on, so did the works, and <em style="background-color: initial;">Relief 4, 28 Nov 2014 - 26 Jul 2017</em> (2014–20) features a carrying case of USB sticks. True time capsules, Koelewijn’s <em style="background-color: initial;">Relief </em>works are the outcome of a part-ritual, part-mental exercise. He utilizes time, language, and knowledge as material in his lifelong endeavor of self-exploration.</p>

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Curator Magalí Arriola maps her journey through 'OVR: Portals'

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