A breath and the sound of water is what first touches our ears and our whole body, a tent that seems to have bodies in a state of enjoyment or suffering, bodies that are caressed or dragged with a golden silk, but we look up and it would seem to be a waterfall that solidifies as it approaches us, and we can enter the tent, search those bodies, but they are not there. In motion, that tent seems to be floating in the water, seems to swim like an anemone, breathes…

Touching Gravity is an installation that included digital prints, a photolithography portfolio, a silk tent, poetry at the level of our feet and photographs where touch, light, organic and inorganic are protagonists without eclipsing each other. A collaboration between Liz Ingram and Bernd Hildebrandt who, while they lived in Buenos Aires for 4 months, toured the city and created from the reflection on their bodies in relation to that city. A project that talks about the perception of oneself in relation to the other, about care, life and death.

Excerpts from the poetry of Touching Gravity
what voice is there between a hand and its fingers / what mitigates an elemental and fugitive breach / what places pressure within an oyster’s realm / what pinches shadows, tempting age not to forget / what seizes upon voices still listening to scars / what speculates upon every circumcision of a finger tip / what listens between lips and tongues / what tempts the land with rain / gravity dissolves light into sand / gravity wakes every new moon / gravity picks pendant fruit / gravity speaks through the silence of touch.

On Wednesday February 21st, 2018 we shared the first Open Studio of the year, in which the artists in residence Akiko Keira and Liz Ingram presented their projects for colleagues and participants of the artistic circuit of Buenos Aires.

After 4 weeks of residence, the Japanese artist Akiko Keira presented her project To Reduce the Distance almost in a performative way, through which she proposed to present in Buenos Aires images and objects that she brought from Japan and Finland, a country in which she made a residency some months before. Akiko created an atmosphere of immersion that, through its Zen rhythm, forces viewers to practice the necessary patience before encountering difference, thereby distinguishing it from our daily rhythm.

Liz Ingram, on her part, gave a talk in which she told about her training, her time as a professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada and presented different projects that she has carried out. In addition, she shared her projections for her time in Buenos Aires, since Liz did a 5-month residency that included the temporary artistic direction of Proyecto´ace.

The World IS a Handkerchief : El mundo es un pañuelo
A Wandering Genealogy curated by Claudia DeMonte & Cecilia Mandrile
The World IN a Handkerchief : El mundo en un pañuelo
Guest Curator, genealogy Proyecto’ace: Alicia Candiani
Exhibition of pieces
selected from the Fundación´ace´s collection and Alicia Candiani’s personal collection of the participating artists in “The world IN a handkerchief”

For a month and a half, the Políglota Room is hosting three exhibitions on a rotating basis. From March 23 to April 1, “The world IS a handkerchief” and “The world IN a handkerchief: the genealogy of ´ace” were exhibited simultaneously, paying special tribute to the Argentine artist Graciela Sacco. While the original  series returned to New York from where it will soon travel to England, the ‘ace genealogy collection was joined by a new exhibition of  large format pieces of the participating artists, some belonging to the Fundación’ace collection and others to the private collection of Alicia Candiani.

The World IS a Handkerchief is a travelling exhibition rooted in the Spanish saying ‘el mundo es un pañuelo,’ which translates into English as ‘this is such a small world’. The project traces serendipitous encounters, moments of discovering personal connections in distant places or unexpected contexts. The project began with the meeting of Claudia DeMonte and Cecilia Mandrile as a mentor and student respectively at the University of Maryland, United States in 1995 and has expanded through an international collaborative network between mentors, students and
peers.

The World IN a Handkerchief is a new chapter of the project, a graphic, soft and traveling portfolio curated by guests artists from the core genealogy. Artist and curator Alicia Candiani, essential mentor of this genealogy, Founder and Director of Proyecto´ace, has been invited to curate this new collection that reflects her close creative family.

ABOUT THE WORLD IN A HANDKERCHIEF  by  Cecilia Mandrile

Handkerchiefs have accompanied people in celebrations and farewells in many cultures for centuries, offered bodily protection and coverage, and sustained expressions of political tenets and spiritual beliefs. In this project, handkerchiefs become vessels of memories and itinerant narratives; containers of emotions; translators of wounds, signals of ideological resistance. Each piece epitomizes a soft space that holds disappearing recollections of homeland as well as reflections on displacement and identity that can be carried as a tangible memento. In times when touch appears as a dangerous sense, every single printed handkerchief means a meaningful testament of the continuous nurturing mentorship among artists and educators, reminding us that the soft touch remains both an intimate and universal need of communication.

To celebrate this constant and sustained creative dialogue, in 2019 the curators developed a portable exhibition of 50 handkerchiefs that explored the meaning of belonging and interconnectedness that this Spanish saying so tangibly evokes. In the reconstruction of this alternative family made up of artists and collectives from different latitudes and generations during the last two decades, both printed an edition of 25 handkerchiefs, and sent a printed handkerchief along with a blank handkerchief to 50 invited artists to intervene with their own reflections
on home, identity and belonging. From this exchange a “wandering genealogy” was born, a tribute to the strong threads that have woven this shared territory as itinerant artists and educators.

A limited edition catalogue including the work of 50 invited artists was published by Impact Press, Bristol, UK and includes an essay by Gill Saunders, Senior Curator of Prints, Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Currently, the catalogs of workshops and portfolios remain as digital publications, thus allowing to document the constant growth of this genealogy. Chris Knollmeyer, a sound artist in residence at ´ace at the same time, composed for this exhibition a special piece: “Sound of the Handkerchiefs”. The piece is a piano study made up of 25 melodies. Just as the handkerchiefs are tied to each artist’s history and sense of home, Chris feels a connection to the piano.