Map on Mirror
H18:00
Entrata: Via Liguria 20
Biography
Programme
H18:00
Entrata: Via Liguria 20
I venerdì pomeriggio
Certain afternoons at Istituto Svizzero are dedicated to our residents. It is an opportunity for the public to learn more about the projects they are working on during this year’s residency. As an exception, the « Friday afternoon » with Manon Wertenbroek takes place on a Thursday.
When a wave hits an obstacle or opening, one encounters a process of diffraction. These waves bend and break into many parts and navigate in different structured directions. Diffraction can occur with any kind of wave and is a common phenomenon in the sciences, but it has also been appropriated within the field of humanities and culture.
First proposed by Donna Haraway and Karen Barad within the scope of feminist theory, this idea of diffraction as a metaphor is seeing a resurgence through the research of present-day philosophers. This comes from an urgency to propose a multi-vocal heterogeneous perspective as well as another “kind of critical consciousness” (Haraway).
For this lecture we will adopt the idea of diffraction as a methodological and metaphorical tool, having recently been inspired by Hannah Wallenfels’s lecture on this topic. Kaleidoscopic, prismatic and cartographic in nature it will map out various strands of Manon Wertenbroek’s artistic practice. This associative mapping will discretely circle around the curatorial interests of Arianna Gellini and Linda Jensen and their work as curators of the Zurich-based art space Last Tango. This fluid zoning in and out will delve into Wertenbroek’s practice and source materials accumulated throughout her stay in Rome.
Through the exploration of the artist’s visual language the curators were triggered to investigate a number of aesthetic vocabularies and concepts, which will be illustrated by a number of media ranging from literature, art, film, and pop music.
Programme
H18:00 Introduction
H18:15 Talk by Arianna Gellini and Linda Jensen in relation to Manon Wertenbroek’s work
H19:00 Q&A session open to the public
The programme will be concluded by a convivial moment that invites for further discussion.
The talk will be held in English.
Last Tango is an exhibition space located in Kreis 5 in Zurich. Its curatorial agenda is based on two-person exhibitions. Last Tango was founded in 2016 and is operated by Linda Jensen and Arianna Gellini. Some of the artists featured in the program have included Fiona Banner, Sam Durant, Melodie Mousset, Kirstine Roepstorff, and Wong Ping.
Linda Jensen is Founder and Co-Curator of Last Tango, an independent art space in Zurich. She was previously Project Associate at the Zurich University of the Arts at the Institute for Contemporary Art Research. She was Co-Curator at Counter Space, Zurich (2014-2016), and Assistant Curator at Burger Collection, Hong Kong (2010-2014). She has realised projects in Zurich, Hong Kong, Paris and Copenhagen. She was co-editor of Torrent magazine, a magazine focusing on source materials by artists. Contributors of the magazine included Robert Storr, Vittorio Santoro, Lawrence Weiner, David Platzker, and Nalini Malani.
Arianna Gellini is Co-Curator of Last Tango, an independent art space in Zurich. She worked for over 9 years in China where she was Gallery Assistant at Aike Gallery in Shanghai (2008-2009), Gallery Manager and Curator at OSAGE Gallery, Hong Kong (2009-2011), and Beijing and Associate Director cum Director of Exhibitions of Gallery EXIT, Hong Kong (2012-2015). During that time she was working closely with artists such as Roberto Chabet, Firenze Lai, Maria Taniguchi, Samson Young, Trevor Yeung, and Pio Abad. She has realised projects in Singapore, Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Vladivostok.
Manon Wertenbroek (1991, Lausanne) is of Swiss-Dutch origin; she took a Bachelor of Arts in photography in 2014 at the École cantonale d’art de Lausanne. Since then, Wertenbroek has shown works in galleries in Holland, Belgium, Italy and France, and also at Art Basel, the Foam Museum in Amsterdam, and the Swiss Institute in Rome. Her work has been featured in the publications Guardian, Mousse, British Journal of Photography, Foam Magazine, i-D, LensCulture and many others. In January 2017 she had her first solo show at Coalmine, Wintherthur. That same year she was assigned the Swiss Art Award by the Federal Office of Culture.