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Dora García
* 1965 Valladolid, Spain. Lives in Barcelona, Spain.
(see the biography)
On the occasion of the 55th International Art Exhibition - la Biennale di Venezia, the Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco presents The Joycean Society as a Collateral Event, a new artistic project by Dora García, winner of the International Contemporary Art Prize (PIAC), at the Spazio Punch on the island of Giudecca.
This new artwork, unveiled at the exhibition, has been produced thanks to the grant for the production of new artwork, awarded to Dora García, the winner of the 45th PIAC (2013) for The Deviant Majority (2010).
The PIAC is given out every third year by the Artistic Advisory Board after consulting international art world professionals (art critics, curators, researchers, collectors, directors of institutions or independent spaces, etc.) who put forward a number of potential laureates. It concerns all forms of contemporary art. Dora García's work was put forward by the art historian and curator Agustin Perez Rubio. The winner is awarded 40,000 Euros, including 20,000 Euros to produce a new piece, to be presented during a major international artistic event. The official awards ceremony takes place in Monaco in fall.
The PIAC Artistic Advisory Board is presided over by Her Royal Highness the Princess of Hanover, with Abdellah Karroum as artistic director and Marie-Claude Beaud (director of the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco) as vice-president. The jury includes five permanent members: Michel Enrici (art historian and critic), Lorenzo Fusi (exhibition curator), Maria Lind (director of the Tensta Art Center in Stockholm), Chantal Pontbriand (art critic), Philippe Rahm (architect and teacher), as well as a guest member for the 2013 edition, Hou Hanru (independent exhibition curator).
About the PIAC, the artistic director Abdellah Karroum has said: "Today, the meaning of an exhibition must be considered within the context of global artistic production issues. By choosing to support the production of a new artwork by Dora García and to show it at the Venice Biennale, the Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco intends to confront the choice of its Artistic Advisory Board with international artistic productions, and to assert its Jury's decision. This project is a commitment to engage in a debate of ideas and in particular to highlight the 'usefulness' of art in the world. Beyond the material reward, the PIAC program supports artists in the production process of a new artwork but also in reflecting on the conditions of production of their exhibition."
The Joycean Society
Created thanks to the funds provided for the production of new artworks awarded to Dora García for the 45th PIAC, The Joycean Society is a film about a book club dedicated to James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, a society made up of students, admirers and connoisseurs of what is often said to be "the most difficult book in the world".
Amputated and rewritten books, a film shot in a book club, a wallpaper made of drawings of fragments of notebook pages: these are the elements of artistic vocabulary Dora García uses in The Joycean Society to explore the relationship between the reality of the readers' experience, perception and the fictions this reality refers to.
The project, conceived as an intervention that turns the exhibition space into a space of interpretation, invites visitors to use all their senses of perception as readers, listeners and viewers, to live an experience in which the artistic subject is affected by the object of the artwork and by its translation on many different levels. The exhibition space, in the old breweries of Venice on the island of Giudecca, is an open structure throughout, allowing a circular reading that echoes the form of Joyce's Finnegans Wake, which has neither beginning nor end.
This project is in line with Dora García's conceptual approach, a method that leads the artist to collaborate with groups of intellectual activity practitioners who work on the boundaries of the understanding of language and on their effects in the field of fiction. Thus, to carry out her project for The Joycean Society, the artist positioned herself at the same distance from the object, i.e. within the observed activity, to offer a work that produces meaning without giving an answer, inspired by the imaginary and creative margins of a world in which one always seeks to define the self in relation to others. Here, the Joycean society is treated both as conceptual material for the artwork and as a philosophical tool for social critique.
(From press information)
Organizer::
Prince Pierre of Monaco Foundation
4, bd des Moulins
98 000
Monaco
Website / Email
PIAC's Artistic Director:
Abdellah Karroum
* 1970 Morocco. Lives in Rabat, Morocco, and in Paris, France.
Venue:
Spazio Punch - Ex Birrerie
Giudecca 800/0, Venice