Atopia – Migration, Heritage and Placelessness | March 1–May 29, 2016 | MamBo, Bogota, Colombia

Atopia: Migration, Heritage, and Placelessness is a new exhibition developed by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21) in collaboration with the Museo de Arte Moderno Bogotá (MamBo). It features works drawn from the collection of TBA21 which reflect the growing interest among contemporary artists in place-specific narratives; dealing with the gaps and slippages between topos and atopos, space and nonspace, the global and the specific practices of cultural in-betweens and hybridization.

Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21), was founded in 2002 by Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza, the Vienna based foundation is dedicated to the production, commissioning and dissemination of contemporary art from around the world. The presentation of Atopia which was initially developed in collaboration with MAZ, Guadalajara, Mexico in 2014, marked the beginning of a series of exhibitions collaborating with key institutions in Latin America being today with MAMBo and it reflects a strong focus on Latin American artists from the collection.

Curated by Daniela Zyman (TBA21) and Valentina Gutiérrez (MamBo), the exhibition addresses the many sides of the global processes of aggregation and homogenization, examining the practices and representations of ways in which artists have accessed, rehearsed, participated in and negotiated concepts of “place”, mapping, landscapes, and geographic descriptions. Atopia, a word used primarily in medicine and philosophy, literally means placelessness, out of place, unclassifiable, and of high, extraordinary originality. Place-specific and locational narratives have thus become important figures of the artistic expressions of the past decade, but also projective sites of stereotyping and (post-colonial or ethnicizing) simplifications. Artistic exploration of geographies through mappings, landscapes, descriptions of sites, places, collection of cultural objects, historical inscriptions and personal research, as well as the shifting political implications in language, writing and formal representation are at the nexus of the current exploration. As an example we can take the prominent pieces of Abraham Cruzvillegas, Mario García Torres, Rivane Neuenschwander, Carl Michael von Hausswolff y Thomas Nordanstad, Allan Sekula, Los Carpinteros, among others.

 

Bogotá's Museum of Modern Art (Museo de Arte de Bogotá - MamBo) is a non-profit foundation, established in 1962, that has been directed by Gloria Zea since 1969. It has a trajectory of over 50 years in which it has developed activities stimulating young art and contemporary artistic practice, as it can be seen throughout its history. A dynamical cultural institution, it strives for the encouragement, disclosure and promotion of all manifestations of visual modern and contemporary art in Colombia.