Booth I5
The project proposed of Art Paris 2024 presents a selection of artists who investigate commonly held assumptions about identity through stereotypes, gender and ethnicity. There's a tendency to assume that identity is a fixed ideal - something very specific rather something quite abstract, ambiguous and transient. It is perhaps significant that the word identity has a similarity with the word 'identify'. As part of the process of understanding, human beings feel a need to classify, generalize and simplify other people's appearance and personality traits - fix them in a stable and stabilizing identity. This can lead to cultural stereotyping where someone from a particular ethnic background is identified with its traditional cultural traits, often unwittingly rendering them with a clichéd identity. in some cultures it is believed that to photograph someone is not only to steal their identity but their very soul.
The 'shaping' of identity, includes elements that are geopolitical, ethnic, class, gendered, generational, institutional, or personal. The project explores how much fact and how much fiction goes into such representations of identity; it could be argued that all art objects concern themselves ultimately with identity, either explicitly or implicitly. The exhibition aims to explore the interrelated fabric of art and identity, framed within the context of socio-political forces and art-historical critiques that influences the production of visual art in an era dominated by the rapid globalization of culture. Some artists use figuration to portray multiple identities that represent existing stereotypes. Or they obfuscate the real through fiction and appropriation of another's identity or impersonate their alter ego in search of the substance of their identity.
Art helps to shape the identity of its maker, subject, and audience. this exhibition aims to explore the interrelated fabric of art and identity, framed within the context of socio-political forces and art-historical critiques that influences the production of visual art in an era dominated by the rapid globalization of culture.
Among the proposed artists are Jason Martin and Joana Vasconcelos, with whom the gallery has established a decade-long relationship and through whom they experiment with light and colour, avoiding rigid decorativism. Martin breaks out of his usual structural canons to use vibrant colours that come close to the tropical landscape, while Joana Vasconcelos turns the domestic context upside down, creating hybrids between aquatic animals and furnishing components. Instead, Sara Berman, Jenni Hiltunen and Tafadzwa Tega investigate the question of identity through the pictorial gesture and especially through portraits. Like Jenni Hiltunen, who through the continuous repetition of female subjects attempts to overturn female stereotypes and at the same time open an investigation into her intimate and collective identity. Just as Sara Berman, through self-portraiture, stages an ever-changing version of her own identity by playing with irony. Tafadzwa Tega, on the other hand, is in search of her own cultural identity and does so through family portraits. Finally, Giuseppe Mulas, who through an always intimate and everyday image indignifies the stereotypes associated with sexual identity and the traumas associated with it.
