TAGS

artist, gabriel-sierra, plan-of-readings.

BIOGRAPHY

Gabriel Sierra was born in San Juan Nepomuceno, Colombia, 1975. Lives in Bogota 2007 Sueño de casa propia, La Casa Encendida, Madrid; Habitat-Variations, Bâtiment de Art Contemporain – BAC, Geneva, Switzerland; Rehabilitación, La casa del Encuentro, Medellín, Colombia 2006 Compuesto Verde (stepmothernature-series), Centre d’Art Contemporain de Brètigny, France 2005 Untitled, Temporary Intervention, Colette, Paris 2002 Todos Lloran Con Jabón En Los Ojos, mini-Mal, Bogota.

INTERVIEW

Ana Paula Cohen: How do you see the curatorship’s invitation to develop the exhibition space on the 3rd floor of the 28th Bienal de São Paulo, considering the idea that we previously shared of proposing a more welcoming place for art, which can be occupied by artworks and by the public?

Gabriel Sierra: My contribution to the Bienal consists in developing a series of structures that work as continents to encourage the public to move around and think freely about the space that configures the exhibition. It is a space designed and constructed in strict cooperation with artists and curators. We conceived the plan as a territory of possibilities, as a temporal space, as a unity and as a board game where the public is an essential part of its configuration. As a space where it is worth asking: is it possible for one to escape from the museum while it is involved in an exhibition: Is it necessary to escape from the museum in order to give a sense to art and to what happens within its borders? Is art dependent on the museum’s physical space, or does it rather depend on the museum’s mental sphere? Is art a possibility to find another space for art?

Ana Paula Cohen: What do you think about the relation between space, the objects inserted in it, and its use? How does this take place in the relation between the supports that you have designed for the 3rd floor, the existing space and the public who will go through it and use it?

Gabriel Sierra: Art does not need architecture or museums to exist; it needs networks and social webs that support its contents, setting forth the logic for constructing a system of possible ways to provide and teach art. I also ask myself how and of what material these networks are made. What are the networks that configure the idea of art, that make it work? Are they specialized communities of production and consumption, or rather the inhabitants of the metropolis, the people, the individuals who see art as spectators? In this exhibition, the space will be approached and considered not as a separation of closed-off and neutral spaces. The idea of limit is brought about by the configuration of each work and the possibilities for its reading.

Ana Paula Cohen: In what sense can the system that you have created to furnish the exhibition’s architecture be called modular, considering that your presence is necessary for determining the sense in each case?

Gabriel Sierra: All the structures and pieces produced for the Bienal are based on the idea of functional archetypes. It is a set of pieces that repeat a pattern of dimensions, in the search of both specific and general possibilities. More than parts or units that form a modular system, they are formats to distribute material in parts or fractions.

Ana Paula Cohen: What is your view on architecture in general and the different ways of inhabiting it?

Gabriel Sierra: For me, the concept of habitat is relative, it depends on each individual and on how he or she configures and modifies his / her own existence in the world. The problem of architecture is that it cannot be directly modified by its inhabitants without demanding a great amount of resources; the entire debate is a question of representation and production. Architecture in general is a limited territory, not only in its physical aspect, but also in its functional one. Architecture is designed from an institutional and productive logic, from compliance with norms, which makes individuals lose their subjectivity and their own ability to transform the world from their own experience. Architecture and design are focused on one single proposition, which tries to penetrate the context in the search of certain qualities, most of them associated to an idea of control and power, putting aside the individuals’ important and less transcendental needs. Modernity is about standardization of the material world, people’s emotions and, finally, their way of thinking. I think architecture should develop under the same logic of the needs and expectations of the people who use the physical space in a construction.


Ana Paula Cohen is an independent curator, editor and art critic. She is presently the curator of the 28th Bienal de São Paulo. Lives in São Paulo.

PROJECTS - 28TH SAO PAULO BIENAL

Projects with updated content