Lives Between

Lives Between
31.08.2017 - 28.10.2017

The Center for Contemporary Art presents Lives Between, a group show opening on August 31st. Featuring work by thirteen artists, the exhibition is curated by Sergio Edelsztein and Joseph del Pesco in collaboration with Kadist, San Francisco. An earlier version of this show was exhibited at Kadist, San Francisco in March 2017.

Lives Between takes as a starting point the growing number of international artists who live and work between two places. These are artists who were born in one country and, for a variety of reasons, have crossed oceans and borders to live in another. Because of this transition, their artistic practice and cultural identity is caught in a tension between their country of residence and country of origin.

Some of the artists in the show migrated with their families as children, or were born elsewhere, but carry with them another culture through their parents, or their ethnicity, and chose to make this paradox an aspect or impetus for their work. Others migrated later as adults in order to expand their professional opportunities. Others simply moved to survive.

These artists live “in between” two places. They develop their personal and professional life in one place (working, raising a family), but when producing artwork they address social and historical issues relevant “back home.” Many of them realize they inhabit, in a sense, a third culture that exists between the two places. They come to learn the benefits and challenges of an interstitial identity.

Lives Between takes shape not only in the artists’ biographies and production processes. Each work is the result of thinking about the migratory and the transitional, cross-cultural contaminations, evidence of explorations into a cultural narrative, or manifestations of mobility. These artists have a unique vantage point, especially at a moment when borders are being renegotiated and waves of refugees fleeing conflict zones have become urgent issues, both from a humanitarian perspective and as political points of contestation.

The case of artists is different than the masses of refugees flocking to Europe these days. They belong to the migrating elites, along with the intellectuals and businessmen who normally anticipate large migratory movements. Since the early 20th century, artists have tended to move to cultural centers: Paris, then New York, London, and today – Berlin, Mexico City, and Brussels. They do so to profit from exposure and contact with other artists, a more sophisticated public, and a more robust market.

Using photography, video, and installation, the artists in this exhibition create bridges between cultures and historical and traumatic events. Most of the artworks deal, in one way or another, with mobility in time and space and, at times, also settle accounts with a homeland that had pushed them away.

Lives Between includes work by thirteen artists:

Aslan Gaisumov (Grozny, Chechen Republic/Moscow, Russia), Dani Gal (Jerusalem, Israel/Berlin, Germany), Binelde Hyrcan (Luanda, Angola/Nice, France), Claudia Joskowicz (Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia/ New York, USA), Pawel Kruk (Koszalin, Poland/Bolinas, USA), Runo Lagomarsino (Sao Paulo, Brazil / Malmö, Sweden), Dana Levy (Tel Aviv, Israel/New York, USA), Ella Littwitz (Tel Aviv, Israel/Ghent, Belgium), Rivane Neuenschwander (Brazil/UK), Otobong Nkanga (Kano, Nigeria/Antwerp, Belgium), Enrique Ramírez (Santiago, Chile/Paris, France), Clarissa Tossin (Porto Alegre, Brazil/Los Angeles, USA), Judi Werthein (Buenos Aires, Argentina/New York, USA)