Curated by Miguel Amad
caraballo-farman (Argentina-Iran/Canada), Carolina Caycedo (Colombia), Hugo Canoilas (Portugal), Ruth Ewan (UK), John Hawke (US), Kiluanji Kia Henda (Angola), Nadja Marcin (Germany), Takashi Horisaki (Japan), Brooke Singer (US), Dread Scott (US)
Abrons Arts Center
466 Grand Street
New York, NY 10002
March 7 – April 17
Tuesday – Saturday, 10-6pm
Opening reception: March 6, 6-8pm
Hugo Canoilas: Mural Newspaper
Mural Newspaper is an urban intervention conceived to create a situation where cultural agents attempt to interpellate a specific type of audience: the population of a city as it goes about its daily routine. The space opened up by this gesture is an opportunity for artists, curators, and other cultural agents to present artistic or cultural practices by weaving reference to these sources of creative inspiration into the actual fabric of the city.
Taking its inspiration from the practice of fly posting information during the PREC (Processo Revolucionario em Curso – the term used to designate Portugal’s transition into Democracy during the 70s) and the Chinese dazibao – large posters used as means of popular communication but also protest, the Mural Newspaper is both a poetic action and a weak gesture. It emerges as a quasi-unique object, given the abundance of advertisement in public spaces, whose apparition is fleeting. In this way it enters the imaginary of the city as news of something that happened but no one saw or whose full amplitude cannot be witnessed.
This gesture implies an effort of political engagement in the attempt to divert city dwellers’ time, to interrupt the experience of the given grids we inhabit. This interruption is conducted by offering the capital these practitioners have to offer: intellectual capital to be shared as an active community.
For Mural Newspaper #2 contributors were asked to answer to the title of the exhibition “The days of this society are numbered” – Guy Debord, curated by Miguel Amado. The poster will be shown first at the Abrons Art Center and after the exhibition they will posted in the streets.
Contributors: Darren Banks, Sophie Lisa Beresford, Hugo Canoilas, Sophie Dodelin, Miguel Ferrão, Eduardo Guerra, Pedro Lagoa, Salomé Lamas, Paulo Mendes, Fernando Mesquita, Ekaterina Shaipiro-Obermair, Wolfgang Obermair, Nick Oberthaler, Ben Patterson, André Romão, Kaszás Tamás, St.Auby Tamás and Mary Temple.