In Greek mythology, a box was given to Pandora, the first woman on earth, but the box was not to be opened under any circumstances. Impelled for her curiosity, Pandora opened the box, and all evil contained inside of it escaped and spread all over the earth. She hastened to close the lid, but the whole contents of the jar had escaped, except for one thing that laid at the bottom: Hope – which remains to this day, mankind’s sole comfort in misfortune. As in the Pandora myth, a symbol of hope lies beneath this collection of works.

The Pandora Project was an international collaborative project involving 15 artists from Argentina, Chile, United States and Uruguay,  that jointly developed an edition of non-traditional paper objects based on the Greek Myth “Pandora’s Box”.

The project was directed and conceptualized by artist and professor, Rimer Cardillo, from the State University of New York at New Paltz, in the United States and Alicia Candiani, artist and director of Proyecto´ace, an international centre for innovative print media located in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

After three months of separate work, (one group in North America and the other in South America), the Pandora’s artists gathered together at Proyecto´ace in Buenos Aires in the month of July of 2006. The encounters took place from the 8th to the 22nd of that month. Through various innovative printing, digital and photographic techniques, pop ups in paper, collage and sewing, the participants were able to document global subjects involving environmental, anthropological and social issues of our time. The printed objects were collected and housed in a portfolio/ “art container”.  Seen as a contemporary Pandora’s box, the container became a symbol of the collaboration among the artists who participated in intensive days of cultural and artistic diversity.

With its 26th edition, the Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts celebrates its 50th anniversary!

This year’s exhibition carries the title Sunek-Thrust. From 23 June to 2 October, eighteen international art institutions from all over the world will present eighteen separate shows in a single space, the Tobacna´s Factory, in an attempt to answer the question: What are the graphic arts -and consequently, what is art in general -in today’s world?

As one of the invited art organiaations, Proyecto’ace, is presenting “Cupí and Birds of Clay Oil and Ashes” an installation by Rimer Cardillo which deals with the concept of the north and south habitats of the Americas. Alicia Candiani, who was curator of the project says: “The installation of Rimer Cardillo at the Tobacna’s Factory hosts a large wall covered with hundreds of silk-screened images printed on paper with clay, oil and ashes. The prints establish a dialogue with a self-standing piece in the shape of a cone: a Cupí. This cone is made by hundreds of hand-made embossed papers woven between hundreds of threads that shape it. The appearance of the cone is of a white eggshell, fragile and delicate. Technically the work began with a negative impression taken by plaster molds from the birds’ corpses (negative printing), which generate other versions (positive printing) that evolve into pieces made of terra cotta, bronze or paper. Photographs of these pieces are digitally manipulated and finally silkscreen-printed in several layers on paper. The artist uses printmaking processes but disregards the edition, the traditional printing matrixes and inks. Instead, he uses plaster molds, acetates, petrol, clay or ashes, all of them elements that are part of the reality of our time”.

Candiani chose Cardillo as she wants work to explore the opening of printmaking technical and conceptual frontiers -as a necessary change to encompass the XXI Century political and artistic world transformations- while attempting to focus on Latin America as a territory of interrelated differences. The Uruguayan master Rimer Cardillo, who was a prize winner at the Seventeenth Ljubljana Biennial, in 1987 represents very well the contemporary Latin American artist involved in cultural displacements, who creates art “from” Latin America without necessarily living “in” Latin America. The artist was born in Montevideo and studied in his home city as well as in Berlin and Leipzig, Germany while currently lives between New Paltz and New York in the United States. He has been included in major international exhibitions such as Venice and Havana Biennials at the same time that he has participated in the printmaking circuit, displaying his works at Krakow, Norway, Taipei and Puerto Rico print biennials and triennials. Recently a retrospective of works on paper was exhibited at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art in New York.

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.