Exhibition @ VisualcontainerTv From the 2nd of July to the 2nd of August 2020

Artist: Marcio Carvalho (PT/DE) – Simona Da Pozzo (IT/NL) – Sophie Ernst (NL/Uk) – Kiluanji Kia Henda (AO/PT) – Sara Vanagt (BE)

Hacking Monuments. Tips to make sense of them is an exhibition i curated in the frame of my Hacking Monuments Public Program for Triennale Milano in 2020. This project has been realized in collaboration with VisualcontainerTV.

Tips to male sense of them explores the phenomena of hacking monuments, by hacking and weaving multilayered connections between monuments, denizens, activists and artists. Since ’70s, several artists have been dealing with the legacy of the power by interrupting the narrative flux of monuments. Denizens and activists join this practice to speak out. All these actors transform the monuments in a space of socio-political dialogue, as we can all testify these days. Besides the artistic and activist intervention, the research focuses on the performative act of confronting the claim of the permanence of the monument; the ritual act of re-coding the appearance of the monument, and, with it, its power to inform the reality. Some hackers use monuments as mannequins:  the monument supports an object that is the real protagonist and signifier of the action. The object dresses the monument, which becomes interchangeable. Some other hackers act in a way I call “monument specific”: interventions that only make sense with that very object, in that very context.

The exhibition Hacking Monuments. Tips to make sense of them presents: Marcio Carvalho (Lisbona/Berlino), Simona Da Pozzo (Napoli/Rotterdam), Sophie Ernst (Rotterdam/Wakefield), Kiluanji Kia Henda (Luanda/Lisbona) e Sara Vanagt (Bruxelles), working with monuments in a performative way. This performative essence of the interventions is translated in two ways. One sees the action as a ritual where a reciprocal redefinition between the monumental object and the artist happens; a ritual of the transformation of the reality. In another one, the artist uses the monument as a body voicing issues and communities.