The Argentinean edition of international lifestyle magazine L'Officiel features our latest virtual exhibition, CUIR | Curated by Chiachio & Giannone presented online by Isabel Croxatto Galería, with an interview to its curators Leo Chiachio and Daniel Giannone by arts editor Facundo Abal.
The publication is available online here (in Spanish).
Find an English translation below.
Recognised as one of the most influential creative couples in Argentinean contemporary art, Leo Chiachio and Daniel Giannone accepted the invitation of Isabel Croxatto Galería, an international platform based in Santiago, Chile, and gathered 20 American artists in a transgenerational constellation of queer creators. L'Officiel Interview.
How did you receive the call from the gallery and how did you conceptually think about the show?
For some time we had been thinking about an exhibition under the title CUIR -a term that within activism has been adapted to how queer sounds phonetically in Spanish-, in which there would be a dialogue between various conceptual axes such as the construction of identities, the notion of the queer family, eroticism and sexuality, plastic and formal values, and the value of this era and/or generation. Although it is difficult to define, the storyline that the group of artworks creates through affection and love is united by a single poetics that is far removed from the hegemonies and monofocal interests of the artistic mainstream.
Which artists did you invite and why?
We were interested in the participation of artists from different regions of the world and at the same time from different generations so that it would be a more global and representative approach to the queer. Many of them we have met personally. All these artists constitute what we call our "family constellation" in art, sharing the same search for these new meanings in a contemporary reflection of the whole world.
What techniques can be seen in the show?
The idea was to invite artists who, sharing the same poetics, work with different techniques and with a special way of working with them. In the exhibition, which can be seen as if it were a music video taking place at night, several techniques coexist: photography, textiles, drawing, video, digital prints, painting, embroidery, video performance, installation, textile mosaic, patchwork and collage.
Where do you consider the current state of the gender debate to be, and what does art have to say about it?
The current gender situation is very uneven in each of the countries where these artists produce their work. Hence the importance of it being an international show with different voices and from different scenes. On the other hand, also from different generations, since the experience and personal history of each one of them constructs a diverse present.
This dialogue is built with the interweaving of voices from different realities, from New York to Buenos Aires, from Buenos Aires to Santiago. Thus this choral narrative is enriched by artists from Brazil, France and Uruguay, among others. The rights of the queer community and its achievements are very different in all these countries, but all these artists have in common an active voice in speaking out for empowerment and resistance, working to position the queer as something that goes beyond sexual identity. In this way, the queer is considered a possible foundation of identity that has the concepts of art+life inseparably linked in the practices of the artists we have convened. Their poetics no longer belong to a binary-patriarchal world, but to others that were on the edge of what art once was, before our present.
