PUBLIC PROGRAM | ESTE CHARLA I Expanding knowledge: the subjective matters
January 6th | 8.30 pm – 10.30 pm | Punta del Este Polo & Country Club

Charlotte Laubard, Curator (France)
Veronica Cordeiro, Curator, (Uruguay/Brazil)
in conversation with Ana Laura Lopez, Artist (Uruguay)
Luis Camnitzer, Artist (Uruguay)

Expanding knowledge: the subjective matters
In our increasingly connected and globalized world, each one of us combines learning processes with a subjective experience of the world; we are continuously constructing our knowledge within and outside the institutional realm. It is clear that art education can no longer depend solely on the basic tools of mediation (wall texts, guided tours, catalogues), and that it has to be rethought in order to reflect the heterogeneity of our contemporary cultural experience. The guests will share their experiences and visions with regards to artistic education and its cultural commitment.

Helmut Batista (Brazil) is the director and coordinator of CAPACETE ENTRETENIMENTOS in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. He coordinated over 250 national and International residencies since 1998. He carried out and moderated more than 300 artists and curators’ talks and presentations in the CAPACETE spaces of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. He participated in 4 São Paulo biennials and several international events. Capacete is a non-for-profit organization directed towards research residencies in visual arts with the production of art works. It was founded in 1998 in Rio de Janeiro and since 2009 includes a venue in São Paulo.

Luis Camnitzer (Uruguay) is a Uruguayan artist residing in the U.S. since 1964. He graduated in sculpture from the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes of the University of Uruguay, and studied architecture in the School of Architecture at the same university, as well as sculpture and engraving in the Fine Arts Academy of Munich. He was the recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships in 1961 and 1982. An emeritus professor of the State University of New York, and also a former Viewing Program Curator for the Drawing Center in New York (1999-2006), Camnitzer was the pedagogical curator of the 6th Mercosul Biennial, Porto Alegre, Brasil. His work has been exhibited in several international exhibitions, including the Venice Biennial in 1988 where he represented Uruguay, the Whitney Biennial, New York (2000), and Documenta XI, Kassel (2002). His work is in over forty museum collections. He is the author of several books, among them Conceptualism in Latin American Art: Didactics of Liberation and On Art, Artists, Latin America and Other Utopias, all published by University of Texas Press.

Ana Laura López de la Torre (Uruguay) Artist, writer, educator, Ana Laura López de la Torre lives and works in Montevideo, Uruguay. Her practice is community-based and involved with ideas of the “common good”, both in terms of what is already common to people – what we are compelled to share, for example a public space – and of what else we might be able to share voluntarily through generosity, collaboration and exchange, by pooling resources and producing communal knowledges. Often using the overlooked and the underrated as a starting point, her work creates visible and unexpected connections between things, people and places. The work unfolds slowly in time and space, and brings together disparate constituencies with a similar interest despite often conflicting agendas, through participatory and collaborative processes. In 1997 she graduated with an MA in Critical Fine Art Practice from Central St Martins College of Art & Design. From 1995 to 2012 she lived in South London, where she developed a body of work enmeshed in the social and cultural life of Brixton, her place of residency and nearby neighbourhoods. She thinks of herself as an “organic intellectual”, where her practice stems from the understanding of the local as a political context for aligning art production with community organising. Her commission record in the UK includes works and projects for the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Art), Whitechapel Gallery, Arts & Business, Gasworks, Tate Modern, Tate Britain and the South London Gallery. Her work in Europe includes also projects at La Casa Encendida (Spain), de kunstbank (Belgium) and Demokratische Kunstwochen (Switzerland). The majority of her artistic production has been done in close collaboration with other artists, with community organisations and people from all walks of life. In parallel, she has worked as a University lecturer at the University of the Arts, London, specialising in performance and live art and in socially-oriented and political practices. In the same University she was co-founder of the postgraduate seminar The Practice Exchange, and SLAAG (Studying Latin American Art Group). Ana Laura is currently completing her doctoral studies at Chelsea College of Art & Design, thanks to a studentship from the University of the Arts, London. Her research project Living together: The artist as a neighbour, studies the practices of artists who chose to work in their own neighbourhoods of residency and belonging.

Charlotte Laubard (France) is Art History and Theory professor and researcher at Geneva University of Art and Design since 2013. She directed CAPC Musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux (2006-2013), was the consultant for Viktor Pinchuk Foundation in Kiev (2005-06), assistant curator at Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea of Turin (2002-05) and curatorial associate at PS1 COntemporary Art Centre in New York (1999-2000). She has also created several projects as an independent curator and currently develops the Nouveaux Commanditaires in Switzerland.

Veronica Cordeiro (Brazil-Uruguay) is the curator of the Photography Centre of Montevideo (CdF) since January 2013, where she commissioned new work by Rosângela Rennó (2011), Dias & Riedweg (2013), among others. Co-curator of the Uruguay Pavilion at the 55th Biennale di Venezia (2013), recent curatorships include residencies and survey exhibitions of Cao Guimarães, Tamara Cubas, Ernesto Vila. With the support of ICI-NY in 2011 she founded Surcontexto, an organization devoted to researching curating in trans-disciplinary and ethnographic contexts. She writes regularly for catalogues and magazines and participates in the Jury of prestigious prizes in Uruguay, Argentina, Canada and Holland.