ARTIUM presents Paperophanies, a project by Jenny Marketou for the Praxis programme

Exhibition
Praxis.
Jenny Marketou. Paperophanies
North Gallery, from October 8 to December 11, 2011
Produced by ARTIUM (Vitoria-Gasteiz)
Curator: Blanca de la Torre
Activities: Conversations with … Jenny Marketou (Thursday, October 13, 7 PM); parade of participants in the workshops (Friday, November 25); activities for families: Good morning ARTIUM (October 12 and November 20 and 27)
http://paperophanies.wordpress.com/    www.jennymarketou.com/     Exhibition     Press release (pdf)

ARTIUM, Basque Centre-Museum of Contemporary Art presents Paperophanies (North Gallery, from October 8 to December 11, 2011), a project created for the Praxis programme by the artist of Greek origin, resident in New York, Jenny Marketou. Marketou directs at ARTIUM several workshops in which the local community, artists and students take part, combining the creation of paper dresses, language and performance to create a metaphor that reflects the fragile state of the world and of the current sociopolitical context. As is usual in the Praxis programme, the project includes the publication of a fanzine. Paperophanies is produced by ARTIUM and curated by Blanca de la Torre.

The use of paper dresses spread in the 70s throughout the USA as a result of the "throwaway" culture and their patterns were inspired by the art trends of the time such as pop art and op art. This fashion only survived the 60s, the epoch in which paper dresses also became the perfect tool to disseminate messages with a clearly political and propagandistic message. Public demonstrations and gatherings were converted into a continuous parade of poster-dresses.

Jenny Marketou has reinstated this fashion because of the iconic power of these dresses that represent optimism, freshness and the vibrant spirit of the period when they were created. The dresses conceived by the artists and which she encourages the public to create for Paperophanies are unisex garments, without a pattern that highlights the defects or virtues of the body and with inserted messages relating to the words "fragile", as a metaphor of the current social and economic system.

Each dress will bear the name of its designer and will be photographed and catalogued, to be hung later on one of the dummies that stand all around the gallery. These designs will remain in the museum-workshop throughout the project and until the moment when the final event is held. This will take the form of a public performance-show with all the participants wearing their own paper dresses created in the workshops.

Paperophanies examines the collaboration between arts, style, fashion, physical mobility, subjectivity and public performance strategies as vehicles for dealing with social, political and economic issues, and promotes DIY (“Do it Yourself”) and the "gift" economy, recurring aspects in the work of Jenny Marketou.

Jenny Marketou

Jenny Marketou was born in Athens, Greece, and lives in New York. Her oeuvre spans a plurality of means in which she combines performances and public and private interventions, video installations, mono-channel video, photography, website projects, education, talks and other forms of social action. She has developed a body of works based on video, digital technologies and social networks, the common points of which are friendliness and a sense of humour towards the individual in the contemporary world of mass communications, mobility, surveillance and social networks. Marketou has given classes at Cooper Union School of Art in New York and has taken part in numerous congresses in academic institutions and arts centres throughout the world. She is the author of the book “Great Longing: The Greek of Astoria, New York”, with photographs and interviews with the first generation of Greek immigrants who settled in Astoria, Queens.

Recently she had one-woman shows at the National Museum of Contemporary Art of Athens, at the Fondazione Claudio Buziol in Venice, in collaboration with the Tina B Festival and students of the art and design school of Treviso, as well as a show of her work at the National Museum Centre of Art Reina Sofía in Madrid. Silver, her series of public installations, can currently be seen at the exhibition Gateways: Art and Networked Culture at the Kumu Art Museum in Tallinn, Estonia, Cultural Capital of Europe curated by the Goethe Institute.

Her work has been exhibited at the 54th Venice biennial; at the Onassis Cultural Centre in Athens; APEX Art, New York; PULSE Art Fair, New York; the 3rd Seville biennial; at the Kunsthalle in Basle; at the Strozzina Contemporary Arts Centre in Florence; at the Pompidou, Paris; at The New Museum, New York; Eyebeam, New York; at the Rose Museum of Contemporary Art, Brandeis University, Boston; at the New Media and Arts Centre of Karlsruhe, Germany; and at the Queens Art Museum, New York; among others. She also represented Greece at the Sao Paulo biennial and at the Manifesta at the Witte de With, Rotterdam.

Since 1995, the work of Marketou has received a large number of grants and internships such as Experimental TV Center Grant, Ithaca, Nueva York; NYSCA Grant, Nueva York; resident artist, Center of Contemporary Art (CCA), Fe, New Mexico; Ohio State Art Council Grant, Cleveland; resident artist, Eyebeam, New York; resident artist and co-producer, Banff, Alberta, Canada; OMI International Residency, Hudson, New York among others.

Praxis

ARTIUM's Praxis programme was started in January 2010 with the aim of offering a series of activities parallel and in addition to the exhibition programme. Praxis arose as an experimental laboratory and its nature has a lot to do with direct action and the “Do It Yourself” habit. As occurs in this case, in Praxis projects, the presence of the artist dominates over that of the work of art and the role played of the artist is much greater than in other exhibition proposals. Praxis has room for a heterogeneous series of projects, the common denominator of which is an attitude inspired by the self-managing spirit of the punk movement of the 70s.

Other Praxis projects

Fernando and Vicente Roscubas. Super Héroe Euskaldunzarra
Teo Sabando
Jacobo Castellano. El mantel y el telón
Avelino Sala. ¡Detente!
Francisco Ruiz de Infante. BlueSky-VGA and the luck factor
Robert Waters.  Uncover RECOVER
Wilfredo Prieto. Pradera constructivista y deconstructivista, vista desde el sofá de la casa con los pies sobre la mesa
Itziar Barrio. Detrás, al final de la comparsa
More information about Praxis
 

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