The Cry
with
Luisa Cunha and
von Calhau
Artists: Absalon, Allora & Calzadilla, Hernan Bas, Irina Botea, Luisa Cunha, El Resplandor, Lara Favaretto, Terence Gower, Jesper Just, David Maljkovic, Christian Marclay, Teresa Margolles, Loreto Martínez Troncoso, Olivia Plender, Ugo Rondinone, Javier Téllez, von Calhau
Curated by: Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy & María Inés Rodríguez
Coordinator: Cynthia González García
Venue: Exhibition Halls 3.1 and 3.2
Dates: 25 June 2011 – 8 January 2012
The title of the exhibition evokes this liberating gesture, whether as a public call that incites political emancipation or as a more private sort of expression that manifests a particular sentiment, as Edvard Munch’s emblematic expressionist painting reminds us. What is explored here is not gesture as the mark that identifies an artist’s work of art, but the way in which concerns and emotions are expressed and structured in our time.
The exhibition is organized into three conceptual blocks each of which addresses different meanings of a single complex expression: the cry of pain, ire; the call for help, which pleads for assistance; and the political clamour, the invitation to the congregation. These three approaches enable locating the manifestation or the reception of the cry in the universe of the individual as well as in the society.
The Cry includes the work of 17 visual artists, five of whom participate with projects produced for this occasion. Except for the work by Absalon (1963-1993), which stages an audible, real, constant and bloodcurdling scream, the set of works in the exhibition evoke and unleash other associations related to this expression, which range from the silent and hushed cry, its reverberation in the community, to its repercussions in the other, as inescapable witness to an event.
In the central part of the exhibition is the “public plaza”, which is the platform for the presentation of three new performances by the El Resplandor group consisting of the von Calhau duo and the artist Loreto Martínez Toncoso. This public plaza will therefore embody an active social sound space. The exhibition design is a special project by the artist Terence Gower, who has actively participated in the curatorial process and developed what we might call an “emotional architecture” (a term coined by the Mexican artist Mathias Goeritz) to house the works by the guest artists. The graphic identity of the exhibition title, which draws on the considerations we wish to convey in this project, was produced by Scott Ponik.
