Creative (un)makings: disruptions in art/archaeology
O6 MARÇO > 14 JUNHO I Museu Internacional de Escultura Contemporânea de Santo Tirso
From 6th March to 14th June 2020, the Santo Tirso International Museum of Contemporary Sculpture hosts an exhibition/installation named “Creative (un)makings: disruptions in art/archaeology”, with the participation of artists and archeologists from all over the world.
From 2010-2012, archaeologists in San Francisco excavated a city-center site in advance of the construction of a major new bus and subway station. The excavation recovered many thousands of artefacts. While a standard set of analyses and interpretation resulted from the project, art/archaeologist Doug Bailey gained control of a large number of the archaeological remains and designed a project to test the collaborative limits of artists and archaeologists. Working with Lisbon-based sculptor, Sara Navarro, Bailey sent assemblages of the artefacts to artists, archaeologists, and other creators. Accompanying the artefacts was the request for people to make new creative work, to use the artefacts not as historical objects, but as if they were raw materials (like pigment or clay), and to repurpose the materials to make artwork that would stimulate visitor questions and thought about a political or social issue of contemporary society. For people working in San Francisco, that issue might be homelessness or income disparity; for people working elsewhere, different local, regional, or national issues might be more relevant (such as immigration, or refugee status). Ineligible is a selection of the result of the works that were made.
Creative (un)makings: disruptions in art/archaeology presents this new approach to the past in three provocative installations. The first (Releasing the Archive) presents photographs and videos in order to turn upside down the standard values that museums and institutional collections use to preserve historic objects and images. The second installation (Beyond Reconstruction) displays an array of ceramic fragments that resulted from the construction/deconstruction of a figure; in addition it includes documentary photographs of the works, highlights the limits of the archaeological reconstruction, and opens a new creative space beyond. The third installation (Ineligible) takes artefacts from an excavation in San Francisco and uses them as raw materials in order to make new artistic work that stimulates museum viewers’ thoughts about modern political and social issues, such as homelessness and income inequality.
Curator: Doug Bailey e Sara Navarro
Participants: Thomas Andersson, Doug Bailey, Jéssica Burrinha, Simon Callery, João Castro Silva, Shaun Caton, Rui Gomes Coelho, Jim Cogswell, Tiago Costa and Daniel Freire Santos, Ilana Crispi, Patrik Elgström and Jenny Magnusson, Dov Ganchrow, Stefan Gant, Cornelius Holtorf with Martin Kunze, Alfredo González-Ruibal and Álvaro Minguito Palomares, Cheryl E. Leonard, Nicola Lidstone, Marko Marila and Tony Sikström, Alison McNulty, Daniel V. Melim, Colleen Morgan, Sara Navarro, Jana Sophia Nolle, Laurent Olivier, Luisa da Rocha, Filomena Rodrigues, Suvi Tuominen, Ruth M. Van Dyke, Valter Ventura, Vanessa Woods
+ info: http://miec.cm-stirso.pt/portfolio/creativeunmakings/