baltic.art · web view2021. 8. 9. · represent and investigate non-human heterotopias away from...

LARGE PRINT

Ad Minoliti: Biosfera Peluche / Biosphere Plush

Please take with you after use

Ad minoliti uses geometry and colour as a tool for creating

alternative universes and speculative pictorial fiction influenced

by feminist and queer thought.

Minoliti trained as a painter and draws on the rich legacy of

geometric abstraction in Latin America, such as Argentina’s

Arte Madí and the Asociación Arte Concreto-Invención. Both

founded in 1945, they embraced playfulness in their work and

worked with irregular shaped canvases, sometimes

experimenting with three-dimensional objects.

Minoliti approaches painting as an expanded field that meets

design and functionality. Through this approach, the space of

the gallery is considered as a tri-dimensional canvas in which to

explore a dialogue between modernism, science-fiction,

animalism, fetish, queer feminism, non-ableism, art education,

toys, architecture, and design. They assume painting not as a

mere material practice, but rather as a visual set of ideas to

represent and investigate non-human heterotopias away from

binary thinking or heteronormative categories of sexuality.

Throughout their work, geometrical forms and hybrid scenery

serve to imagine beyond-the-human settings in which queer

feminism, the animal dimension and childhood can be applied

to an open interpretation of painting, design, and art history

beyond binary categorisations.

Biosfera Peluche / Biosphere Plush has been conceived as a

critical speculation of Biosphere 2, the world’s largest Earth

science experiment launched in 1984, in the Arizona desert.

Funded by oil tycoon, Ed Bass, Biosphere 2 was created to

study whether or not humans could create and sustain life in an

artificial environment such as space stations. B2’s team tried —

consequently failing — to isolate eight people (four women and

four men, all white Americans and one European) for two

years. This monumental experiment is a perfect example of the

space race being an extractivist colonising endeavour,

2

enhancing the interests of the already powerful — including

major economic and military institutions — and exacerbating

pre-existing detrimental processes such as wars, economic

inequality, and environmental degradation.

Biosfera Peluche / Biosphere Plush intends to work in the

opposite direction to Biosphere 2. Its environment has been

conceived as a community centre open to all, offering a space

for intersectional feminist education and fantasy. The exhibition

proposes encounter and lingering spaces for visitors amongst

the artist’s works.

Including 15 new paintings, the exhibition presents a selection

of 11 works from the Fable (Butterflies and Flowers) series

and four paintings from the Space Playset series. These works

have all been painted in the artist’s usual playful and

biomorphic style. They create a digital image that is printed on

canvas, which is then hand-painted. This layering of digital and

3

human applications, deepens the colour and blurs the line

between human and machine. Minoliti conceives these works

as cyborg paintings.

The exhibition features Minoliti’s ongoing project The Feminist

School of Painting, transforming part of the gallery space into

an active classroom. Through bi-weekly painting workshops,

the school will deconstruct historical narratives and reimagine

the traditional genre of landscape painting from a feminist,

intersectional and queer perspective. In partnership with a

multidisciplinary group of artists, academics, writers, and

activists, the workshops will revaluate the structure of art

education and promote accessibility, creativity and curiosity

over any art-specific expertise.

Minoliti considers the subject of landscape in its expanded

form, from natural or human-made features, to outer-space and

imaginary settings. The genre of landscape, is an important tool

4

used in colonisation. Minoliti has said that ‘landscape as a

pictorial genre was used to promote the colonial invasion of

America and recent movies about Mars exploration exhibit

many of the same structures.’

Building on the artist’s interest in shedding light on feminist and

queer artistic practice, Biosfera Peluche / Biosphere Plush

also includes an international library of queer and feminist

zines, which will grow during the course of the exhibition.

5

Exhibition Guide:

Gati, 2019 (Cat)

Furry mask, gloves, tail and clothes and bag on mannequin,

metal hardware, glass

Zorrx, 2019 (Wolf)


metal hardware, glass

Osx, 2021 (Dog)


metal hardware, glass. With sweatshirt art by Lam Hoi Sin

6

Fable (Butterflies and Flowers), 2021

Acrylic on canvas


Acrylic on canvas

7


Acrylic on canvas


Acrylic on canvas

8


Acrylic on canvas


Acrylic on canvas

9


Acrylic on canvas


Acrylic on canvas

10


Acrylic on canvas


Acrylic on canvas

11


Acrylic on canvas

Space Playset, 2021 Acrylic on canvas

12

Space Playset series

In this series, each painting represents a space fantasy. The

series is a development from Minoliti’s Dollhouse series in

which each painting represents a dollhouse room. In both

series the artist critically considers the question of gendered

toys and the marketisation of reductive heteronormative play for

children. Space Playset was inspired by recent toys that

attempt to promote STEM subjects for girls, such as Luciana —

an astronaut doll with a very expensive spaceship. Minoliti

pledges for fantasy and play accessible to all, away from binary

constructions of gender and a capitalist co-option of feminism.

This series continues Minoliti’s interest in the relationship of

gender and science, and it is in dialogue with their work

Geometries in Space (2019), for which they imagined space

exploration and space colonies of the future, free of patriarchal

domination.

13

Fable (Butterflies and Flowers) series

In this series Minoliti develops a language around nature, using

motifs such as flowers and butterflies. The artist was inspired

by the introduction of Sarah Kay — a fictional character created

by Australian artist Vivien Kubbos, which represented the

simple joys of childhood, friendship, love and kindness — to the

Argentinian context in the 1970s, as a way to promote

heteronormative and domestic values for Argentinian women.

At the time, Argentina lived under a violent and repressive

regime that disappeared young mothers, and abducted their

children to give them to pro-regime families.

In this series, Minoliti uses geometrical shapes as a way to re-

appropriate the tender values promoted by Sarah Kay, whilst

associating them to a non-binary context that strips away any

human references.

14

Furries

Osx with sweatshirt art by Lam Hoi Sin (2019)

Gati (2019)

Zorrx (2019)

All: Furry mask, gloves, tail and clothes and bag on mannequin,

metal hardware, glass.

With the Furries, Minoliti introduces a non-human element to

transform the gallery into an alternative universe where furry

beings become inhabitants of the Biosphere Plush.

Minoliti originally introduced mannequins in their work as

supports to show painting on clothing. Within the context of

their installations, the mannequins become creatures in-

between worlds and the Furries’ heads add a mutant, animal

dimension.

15

Ad Minoliti: Biosfera Peluche / Biosphere Plush is curated by

Irene Aristizábal, BALTIC’s Head of Curatorial and Public

Practice. The exhibition is a collaboration with Centre de

Création Contemporaine Olivier Debré, Tours, France, where

Ad Minoliti will present a solo exhibition in October 2021 —

March 2022.

A new monograph will be published in 2021 in collaboration

with CCCOD, Tours; Galerie Crêvecoeur, Paris; Galería

Agustina Ferreyra, Puerto Rico; and Peres Projects, Berlin.

16

Glossary

Animalism

A personal identity theory that asserts that humans are animals

of the species Homo sapiens.

Heterotopias

The idea of heterotopia was created by French philosopher

Michel Foucault to describe cultural, institutional and imagined

spaces that are somehow ‘other’: disturbing, intense,

incompatible, contradictory or transforming. Heterotopia follows

the template established by the notions of utopia and dystopia.

The prefix hetero, from Ancient Greek means other or different.

It is combined with the Greek for place. Together they mean

‘other place’.

17

Heteronormative

Relating to a worldview that promotes heterosexuality as the

‘normal’ or default sexual orientation. Heteronormativity

suggests or believes that only heterosexual relationships are

‘normal’ or right, and that men and women have naturally

different roles in society.

Extractivism

Extractivism is a system of social, economic and geopolitical

relations that is characterised by the exploitation of natural

resources by extractive industries (such as mining or oil

production), and of people, for example historically enslaved

peoples or contemporary precarious workers.

18

Colonisation

Colonisation is the act of sending people to live in and govern

another country. It is a practice of domination, which involves

the subjugation of one people to another. The term colony

comes from the Latin word colonus, meaning farmer. This root

reminds us that colonisation usually involves the transfer of

population to a new territory, where the arrivals live as

permanent settlers while maintaining political allegiance to their

country of origin.

19

baltic.art · web view2021. 8. 9. · represent and investigate non-human heterotopias away from...

Documents