Seeking to reactivate the cultural sector, and on the occasion of its anniversary, the gallery Arte Actual FLACSO proposes an intensive agenda for 2022, consisting of 15 exhibitions (as it celebrates its 15th anniversary), in 5 periods, with 3 simultaneous solo shows, in addition to various parallel activities.
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| Melcocha Kitsch (2022) by David Andino |
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| Image: Arte Actual FLACSO |
El Azar Elige emerges as a podcast that takes chance as a production strategy to make a colloquial and unexpected journey through contemporary Latin American photography. The collective is composed of Martina León Valdiviezo, María Inés Armesto, Santiago de la Torre Freire, who, in each episode, culminate with a question and a slogan to explore the themes addressed, their personal experiences and the different possibilities of photography as a medium. The exhibition consists of the results of this exploration.
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| El Azar Elige (2022) |
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| El Azar Elige (2022) |
Zhiro, on the other hand, is the exhibition of Mexican photographer Alessandro Bo. Here, the artist seeks to reconstruct, through storytelling and photography, a mythological beast that inhabits the forests of the Andes Mountains. This beast is known as Zhiro. Alessandro manages to enter the imaginary that surrounds the beast, through an extensive photographic archive and testimonies that reflect its possible existence.
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| Zhiro (2022) by Alessandro Bo |
Finally, Melcocha Kitsch draws from a vast visual archive - coming from popular art, graffiti, posters, pop culture, animation, comics - and wanders through the crudest and most shameless aspects of contemporary culture, characterized by its superficiality, immediacy, consumerism and social gaps.
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| Melcoch Kitsch (2022) by David Andino |
It also responds to the complex work context for artists during the pandemic. Economic precariousness translates into new representational needs and the use of unconventional materials. From the reuse of bar code adhesives, taken from the food and pharmaceutical industry, large and medium format supports are generated, which are intervened pictorially. Thus, Melcocha Kitsch, through a sort of visual recycling and cultural reappropriation, resignifies images and meanings that we sometimes take for granted, to give us a broken, dirty and vulgar postcard of what today defines us as a society.
As parallel activities we have some interventions and guided tours, so it is important to be attentive to not miss anything.
