The exhibition ‘When Oceans Meet’ is a two-part, themed programme of video and film projections by a group
of international artists to be held over the course of six weeks at Michaelis School of Fine Art’s Upper Gallery.
Featured artists include Vasco Araújo (PT), Jesper Just (DK), Pauline Boudry/Renate Lorenz (CH/DE),
Claudia Ulisses (PT), Adrián Paci (AL), Allan Sekula & Noël Burch (US).

The exhibition ‘When Oceans Meet’ is a two-part, themed programme of video and film projections by a group of international artists to be held over the course of six weeks at Michaelis School of Fine Art’s Upper Gallery. Featured artists include Vasco Araújo (PT), Jesper Just (DK), Pauline Boudry/Renate Lorenz (CH/DE), Claudia Ulisses (PT), Adrián Paci (AL), Allan Sekula & Noël Burch (US).

Conceived by Nancy Dantas, this programme has been curated as a tentative response to the wider histories and issues prompted by ‘Miss Gay Western Cape’ and ‘Spring Queen’, two local beauty pageants currently under the lens of scholars, curators and archivists at Michaelis’ Centre for Curating the Archive, the Royal Holloway University of London, Queen Mary University of London and Brown University.  The selected works commune with the ideal of resistance that inconspicuously bonds, or which in this artificial arena of projection, willfully approximates society’s invisible textile workers and queers, two communities at the centre of these pageants and aforementioned research, as the ‘others’ of society’s hegemonic, body-normalizing, depredating capitalist system.

Works on view will be presented in a two-part programme between February and April of 2014. The first part, titled ‘ Sex, Leather Jackets & Cigarettes’, seeks to engage ideas of difference and resistance, obliquely evoking queer genealogies and untold stories. The second section of works, included under the subtitle ‘Unemployed 34 Weeks’, will attempt to establish a larger conversation about the working conditions of labourers in an increasingly globalized and consumer-oriented economy and society.

This exhibition is part of the Honours in Curatorship programme run by Michealis School of Fine Art’s Centre for Curating the Archive.

Featured works, exhibition dates and times:

27 Feb – 1 Mar, 16.00 – 18.30

Vasco Araújo, About Being Different, 2007, video, 18′ 24”

Courtesy of the artist

5 Mar – 8 Mar, 16.00 – 18.30

Jesper Just, A Fine Romance Trilogy (The Sweetest Embrace of All, No Man Is an Island, A Fine Romance), 2004, DVCAM, 15’22”

Courtesy Galleri Nicolai Wallner, Copenhagen

13 Mar – 15 Mar, 16.00 – 18.30

Pauline Boudry/Renate Lorenz, Charming for the revolution, 2009, DVD, 13′

Courtesy Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam

20 Mar – 22 Mar, 16.00 – 18.30

Claudia Ulisses, Utopia, Mod. 273/99, 1999, video, 4′ 26”

Courtesy of the artist

27 Mar – 29 Mar, 16.00 – 18.30

Adrián Paci, Centro di Permanenza Temporanea, 2007, video, 5′ 30”

Courtesy of the artist and kaufmann repetto, Milan

3 Apr – 5 Apr, 16.00 – 18.30

Allan Sekula & Noël Burch, The Forgotten Space, 2010, digital, 112′

Courtesy of Doc.Eye Film

Location:

Upper Gallery, Michaelis School of Fine Art, Hiddingh Campus, University of Cape Town, 31-37 Orange Street, Cape Town. For further information, kindly contact Josephine Higgins at Michaelis Galleries: jm.higgins@uct.ac.za or 021 480 7170.

Artist biographies:

Vasco Araújo (born Lisbon, 1975) trained as a lyrical singer before studying sculpture at the University of Lisbon. His work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions. Major solo exhibitions include Pinacoteca de São Paulo, 2013; Musée d’Art de Joilette, Joilette, 2011; Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, 2010; Jeu de Paume, Paris, 2008. Forthcoming exhibitions include Under the influence of Psyche, The Power Plant, Toronto.

Pauline Boudry/Renate Lorenz have collaborated since 1998 and their work has been extensively exhibited on an international scale. In their own words, they are interested in “the question of how ‘normality’ can be reworked today, how difference can be lived without constant disempowerment, without being appropriated and without taking on neo-liberal economy’s offer of integration.” Recent solo shows include CAPC, Bordeaux, 2013; Fort Worth Contemporary Arts, 2013; South London Gallery, London, 2012; Swiss off-site Pavilion as part of Chewing the Scenery, Venice Biennale, 2011; Les Complices, Zurich, 2010; Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva, 2010.

Danish artist Jesper Just’s earlier work, of which this trilogy has been extracted, articulates a critique of dominant codes of masculinity, propagated by the mainstream and Hollywood production. Just (born Copenhagen, 1974) attended the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts between 1997 and 2003. He has participated in countless international group exhibitions. Recent major solo exhibitions include Herning Museum for Contemporary Art, Jutland, 2013; University of Michigan Museum of Art, 2012; Des Moines Art Center, 2011; Tampa Museum of Art, Florida, 2010. Just was responsible for the Danish Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013).

Adrian Paci was born in Shkodër, Albania, in 1969. From 1987 to 1991 he attended the Academy of Arts in Tirana. Before fleeing an unstable Albania in 1997, he was a lecturer of art history and aesthetics in Shkodër. Paci’s position as an exile holds a central place in his oeuvre.  In 1999 he was among the first Albanian artists to represent his country at the Venice Biennale. Recent major one-man shows include Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris, 2013; National Gallery of Kosovo, 2012; Monash University Museum of Art, 2012; Istanbul Modern, 2010; Kunsthaus Zurich, 2010. Paci currently resides and works in Milan.

The late and hugely influential Allan Sekula was born in 1951 in Erie, Pennsylvania. Sekula and his family relocated to the Port of Los Angeles before his teens. It was here that he grew to love the sea and maritime culture. Sekula enrolled at UC San Diego with the intention of studying marine biology, but after a few courses with John Baldessari, switched his major to visual arts. After receiving his MFA in 1974, he began publishing articles on the social uses of photography. He taught at the California Institute of the Arts for almost 30 years. His work has been shown in solo exhibitions at the University Art Museum at Berkeley; Rotterdam’s Witte de With; the Moderna Museet in Stockholm; the Munich Kunstverein and the Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels. He was included in numerous group shows including the 1993 Whitney Biennial and Documenta 11 (2002) and 12 (2007). The Forgotten Space, which he created with Noël Burch, was awarded the Special Jury Prize at the 2010 Venice Film Festival (Orizzonti Section).

Noël Burch was born in San Francisco in 1932. He has been living in France since 1951. Burch is the author of Theory of Film Practice (1973) and To a Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in Japanese Cinema (1979). Although primarily known as a theorist, he has directed over twenty films, most of which are documentaries. From 1966 to 1971, he collaborated with Janine Bazin, Jean-André Fieschi and André S. Labarthe for the celebrated series, Cinéastes de Notre Temps (Filmmakers of Our Time), contributing to a renewal of the “filmmaker portrait”. He is the co-founder and director of the Institut de Formation Cinématographique, an alternative film school associating theory and practice.

Claudia Ulisses (b. 1967, Porto, Portugal) is currently based in New York, where she moved after participating in ISCP’s international studio programme. Her work has been featured in major group exhibitions. Recent participations include Cinco Séculos de Desenho, Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis, Porto (2012); Margenes de Silencio, Fundación Helga de Alvear, Cáceres (2011); Viva, Vital International Video Art Festival, Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (2010); Image at Work, The Romanian Cultural Institute of Stockholm, Moderna Museet and Index, Stockholm (2010).