Praxis NY- 501 W 20th St, New York, NY 10011
February 10th – March 26th
Curated by Agustin Schang
Poetry by Valeria Meiller/ closing event sound intervention by Kyla-rose Smith
Photos: Arturo Sanchez
I Went There.
"There" is one of the places you can go without adding "to"
With many other places, the preposition "to" follows, indicating a one-of-a-kind spot that cannot be mistaken for any other location; or "to the" when referring to a particular site out of a larger group. When 'places' goes alone, this suggests directions to travel, similar to prepositions and geographical directives, prompting navigational paths that could end in unexpected rides.
From doodling sessions with the TV switched on, to common findings on the cityscape while circling around, to reflective conversations with soul specialists, the multiple routes of Sofia Quirno's everyday associations are presented through a selection of new work. Numerous paintings that could ambiguously become sculptures, close to fragments of thoughts combined into set-pieces and built objects, occupy the gallery's space revealing and examining how it feels to be an individual living and working today.
I Went There comes from a quest to acknowledge and expose. Grappling with themes of existence, longing, femininity, and spiritual life, Quirno uses paint, ink, paper, new and found materials to suggest a world inhabited with unconventional figurations, metaphors, and entanglements. Exposing what is heard from; the mind and inner voices with irony, the group of displayed pieces intends to question existing structures, vulnerability, and the sayings of the commonplace. And occupied with the ambivalences of chance and decision in personal existence – a continuous self-interrogated system of meaning – this crowd is simultaneously facing outwards, presenting communication and exchange, supported by structures that ease these encounters.
The exhibition reinterprets the quotidian landscape of life, highlighting the perception of extracurricular experiences and, in particular, the animated and complex occurrences encountered by the simple act of going around. Sometimes wandering and going places, from here to there, and from there to here, could be fairly exhausting and arduous. So make sure you bring some music and poetry. And some padding between you and the outside world.
– Agustin Schang
Have you Been There? - Poem by Valeria Meiller
Agustin Schang is an Argentine architect, curator, and cultural producer based in New York. He was curator in residence at the Emily Harvey Foundation and program manager and curator of public programs for Columbia’s GSAPP Incubator. He holds an architect degree from Universidad de Buenos Aires and a master’s degree in critical, curatorial, and conceptual practices in architecture from Columbia University GSAPP. His cultural practice intersects art, design and architecture. He has curated and produced various initiatives with institutions such as: Americas Society / COA, New Museum’s Ideas City; Friends of the High Line; Chicago Architecture Biennial, The Leslie-Lohman Museum; The Shed; Little Island @Pier55, CCCB Barcelona, Het Nieuwe Instituut Rotterdam, Istanbul Design Biennial, London Architecture Film Festival, and Fundación Proa Buenos Aires.
Some of his last curatorial works include: The Dinner Series (2014-15), Ways of Treating Buildings in Order to See Them (2015), EHF Collection, Fluxus, Concept Art, Mail Art (2017), examining the communal spatial narratives and artistic legacies around the Emily Harvey Foundation building in New York City; Shigeko Kubota SoHo SoAp/Rain Damage (2018) reflecting on video journal chronicles and climate damages at Screen Spaces exhibition- Het Nieuwe Instituut, and In Situ: Conversations on Architecture and Beyond (2020), a digital project in collaboration between Americas Society and Center for Architecture New York highlighting design practices and critical thinking across the Americas.
Valeria Meiller is a writer and scholar specializing in environmental issues in the Latin American region. Her work has been published worldwide. Valeria is the author of four poetry books in Spanish: El Libro de los caballitos (with illustrations by Quirno, 2021), El mes raro (2014), Tilos (2014), and El Recreo (2010). She works and lives between New York and San Antonio, where she is an Assistant Professor of Social and Environmental Challenges in Latin America at the University of Texas.
Her interdisciplinary and collaborative environmental projects have been part of the 5th Istanbul Design Biennial, the Contemporary Art Center in Lithuania and the London School of Architecture, among others. Valeria Meiller holds a PhD from Georgetown University, with a Master in Cultural Studies from Georgetown and a diploma in Critical Theory from the University of Buenos Aires. She is currently working on her first scholarly book and the multimedia project Ruge el bosque, an anthology of contemporary South American ecopoetry.
Kyla-rose Smith is a performer, violinist, and multimedia artist. She was violinist and backing singer with Freshlyground, South Africa's premier Afropop band, and has established herself as an emerging multimedia artist and her current projects engage with aural and visual dimensions of contemporary society. She is co-artistic director and artist facilitator of Hear Be Dragons, a sound mapping project and artistic exchange program that explores sound and the city and the way these influence our quality of life, perceptions of history and memory, and notions of identity. She is also co-creator of Jiyan and Memories, a body of work exploring ancestral memory, matriarchal lineage, and the rituals of homemaking with groups of women in Turkey and Appalachia.
Kyla has curated and produced a variety of contemporary artistic pieces. She is currently the Program Director and Curator of OneBeat, an incubator for music-based social entrepreneurship, supported by the US State Department, where musicians launch collaborative projects designed to make a positive impact on local and global communities. She is also a member of the Found Sound Nation artist collective where she serves as the director of their non-profit label Found Sound Records