Expanded Performance: Manuela Moscoso
Terug naar overzichtspagina bijeenkomst: klik hierBack to main page of this event: click here
Manuela Moscoso is an independent curator based in New York, originally from Quito, Ecuador. She specializes in commissioning new art projects and in curating group shows, and sees collaboration as integral to her practice. In the summer of 2010, she curated Even in the Quietest Moments at Vogt Gallery, NYC which engaged some aspects of Rivet's research. In Spain, she organized Before Everything, a large-format exhibition co-curated with Aimar Arriola at CA2M (Madrid), which focused on art production in Spain over the last 20 years. In December 2001, together with Patricia Esquivias, she co-founded and directed los29enchufes, a curatorial project that started as an artist-run space that now operates as a sporadic curatorial collaboration. She also co-runs JULIO, an online curatorial project that produces screenings (2008, Alba Cinema) as well as exhibitions (2010, Centro Cultural de São Paulo). In collaboration with SMAK (Belgium), Manuela Moscoso produced and directed the first curatorial residency in Madrid in 2008. She is currently the Queens Museum of Art Curatorial Fellow where she is co-curating the next Queens International Biennale 2012. She is also part of the curatorial team for the projects section in ARCO 2012. Manuele Moscoso holds a Master's Degree in Curatorial Studies from the Center for Curatorial Studies in Bard College and graduated with a BFA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design, London. From 2013 she will be director of Capacete, Brasil.
Manuela Moscoso in her own words
My curatorial practice is drawn and underpinned on my own past perspective and experiences as an artist. Thus at the present day, I am concerned with widening the understanding and exploring exhibitions formats while seeking to facilitate nutritious spaces that contextualize the artists' work. I have an inexhaustible curiosity about and respect for the artists' work processes.
In fact one the most challenging aspects of my curatorial own practice is to deepen my knowledge about the artists' oeuvre and their work processes for then, either, propose them a group exhibition or commission a project-based solo exhibitions. My professional development and experience as a curator has been a "learning by doing" process. During my curatorial work I have been concerned to address two main questions:
(i). What should be the curator's role when art institutions and the local cultural infrastructure are weak?
(ii). What could be a curator's statement towards a local artistic tissue confronting an evolving international art world?
So in this way, between 2006 -2007, I carried out 6 short length exhibitions in "non-conventional" spaces (or not art devoted spaces), which have been either chosen by the artists invited, or where I invited artists to exhibit in a given particular site.
These exhibitions or events that lasted for one day provided excellent options for performance budget productions. My aim with these exhibitions was to bring attention forward to debate, dialogue and exchange of ideas about one day lasting events.
I invited artists with a high quotient of performance in their work and who could potentially use these "limitations" as the motor to produce new work. I worked with artists such as Jorge Satorre, David Bestúe and Marc Vives, Carlos Rodríguez-Méndez, Antonio de la Rosa, Julia Spínola, Ester Mañas and Arash Moori, among others.
In 2008, and in collaboration with the S.M.A.K. (Belgium) we proposed Harder, Better, Slower, Stronger! the first international curator visit and symposium programme of this nature ever, which took place in Madrid.
Four international curators were invited on an intensive guided tour that's lasted for a week into the local Madrilenian art scene, including studio visits and meetings with cultural producers and local alternative art spaces. The main goal of this programme was to unlock the local Madrilenian art scene to a broader international public of cultural producers and curators.
Moreover, it was followed by the symposium program Harder, Better, Slower, Stronger!, hosted by La Noche en Blanco. This symposium brought four local curators together with six international curators. The main aim of this symposium was to develop a dialectical discussion of local versus evenemential curatorial practice.
Moreover, in 2008, together with Ramon Mateos we founded JULIO an audiovisual periodic online platform, centred in the dissemination contemporary art of audio/video format of selected artists, rooted and influenced by music and films. In this sense, JULIO's image in movement is explicit in its contents: from the contribution of selected artists, curators', to current thoughts and theories that aims at informing artistic practice in our present days.
