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Catalog:

ROOM 01

FORMAT21 Photography Festival View 3D Gallery Visitor Feedback
Poster image for ROOM 01

Statement:

PLEASE NOTE

Some works in the exhibition ‘Matrix – fluid bodies, unlimited thoughts’ contain images of an adult nature.

Parental/ Guardian guidance is advised for under 16s

'Matrix – fluid bodies, unlimited thoughts'
Curated by: Marina Paulenka
Artists: Tabita Rezaire, Juliana Huxtable
Martine Gutierrez.

Lishui Photo - 'Famous Internet Sites'
Curated by: Luo Dawei
Artist: Zou Jingyao

Artworks in this room:

Visit the Web Celebrated Sites

Zou Jingyao (China)

Shanghai 09 2019

Zou Jingyao (China)
Shanghai 09 2019

Beijing 11 2018

Zou Jingyao (China)
Beijing 11 2018

Wuhan 12 2018

Zou Jingyao (China)
Wuhan 12 2018

Shanghai 14 2018

Zou Jingyao (China)
Shanghai 14 2018

Shanghai 16 2019

Zou Jingyao (China)
Shanghai 16 2019

Wuhan 17 2018

Zou Jingyao (China)
Wuhan 17 2018

Beijing 20 2019

Zou Jingyao (China)
Beijing 20 2019

Beijing 21 2018

Zou Jingyao (China)
Beijing 21 2018

Beijing 22 2018

Zou Jingyao (China)
Beijing 22 2018

Beijing 30 2019

Zou Jingyao (China)
Beijing 30 2019

31 Yellow

Zou Jingyao (China)
31 Yellow

32 Red

Zou Jingyao (China)
32 Red

33 Blue

Zou Jingyao (China)
33 Blue

31 Yellow

Zou Jingyao (China)
31 Yellow

33 Blue

Zou Jingyao (China)
33 Blue

32 Red

Zou Jingyao (China)
32 Red

Martine Gutierrez, Body En Thrall, Blonde Bra, 2020, courtesy RYAN LEE Gallery, New York

Martine Gutierrez (US)
Martine Gutierrez, Body En Thrall, Blonde Bra, 2020, courtesy RYAN LEE Gallery, New York

Inner Fire - Shadelicious

Tabita Rezaire (US)
Inner Fire - Shadelicious

Body En Thrall, p120 from Indigenous Woman, 2018, courtesy RYAN LEE Gallery, New York

Martine Gutierrez (USA)
Body En Thrall, p120 from Indigenous Woman, 2018, courtesy RYAN LEE Gallery, New York

Body En Thrall, Blonde Bed, 2020, courtesy RYAN LEE Gallery, New York

Martine Gutierrez (US)
Body En Thrall, Blonde Bed, 2020, courtesy RYAN LEE Gallery, New York

Body En Thrall, p104 from Indigenous Woman, 2018, courtesy RYAN LEE Gallery, New York

Martine Gutierrez (US)
Body En Thrall, p104 from Indigenous Woman, 2018, courtesy RYAN LEE Gallery, New York

Body En Thrall, p112 from Indigenous Woman, 2018, courtesy RYAN LEE Gallery, New York

Martine Gutierrez (US)
Body En Thrall, p112 from Indigenous Woman, 2018, courtesy RYAN LEE Gallery, New York

Inner Fire - Pimp Your Brain

Tabita Rezaire (French Guyana)
Inner Fire - Pimp Your Brain

Inner Fire - Make it Rain

Tabita Rezaire (French Guyana)
Inner Fire - Make it Rain

Inner Fire - BBHMM

Tabita Rezaire (French Guyana)
Inner Fire - BBHMM

Inner Fire - Bow Down

Tabita Rezaire (French Guyana)

Inner Fire is a series of five life-sized digital self-portraits. The series explores the politics and imaginaries of the artist’s identities, aspirations and contradictions, navigating social architectures of power and the intense complexities of feelings. The works embody archetypes of the Black Woman in terms of race, sexuality, spirituality, technology and capital, mapping how those narratives affect her own as well as our collective mind and heartscapes.

Inner Fire - Bow Down

Interfertility Industrial Complex 5, (ASS 2)

Juliana Huxtable (US)
Interfertility Industrial Complex 5, (ASS 2)

Interfertility Industrial Complex 5, (ASS 1)

Juliana Huxtable (US)
Interfertility Industrial Complex 5, (ASS 1)

Interfertility Industrial Complex: Snatch the Calf Back

Juliana Huxtable (US)

Zoosexuality

Juliana Huxtable (US)
Zoosexuality

Zoosexuality

Juliana Huxtable (US)
Zoosexuality

Zoosexuality

Juliana Huxtable (US)
Zoosexuality

Zoosexuality

Juliana Huxtable (US)
Zoosexuality

A Split During Laughter at the Rally

Juliana Huxtable (US)

Premium Connect

Tabita Rezaire (French Guyana)

Premium Connect envisions a study of information and communication technologies exploring African divination systems, the fungi underworld, ancestors communication and quantum physics to (re)think our information conduits. Overcoming the organism-spirit-device divide, this work explores spiritual connections as communication networks and the possibilities of decolonial technologies. Premium Connect investigates the cybernetic spaces where the organic, technological and spiritual worlds connect. How can we use biological or metaphysical systems to fuel technological process of information, control and governance? Contrary to the Eurocentric-biased thinking, our information super highway might find its roots in African spirituality. Significant research attributes the birth of binary mathematics - which is the foundation principle of computing sciences - to African divination systems such as Ifa from the Yoruba people, of West Africa. We have much to recover in terms of connectivity and its potentialities. As modern science just recently discovered the role of underground fungi networks used by plants to communicate and transfer information, ancient tradition have long known how to communicate with nature and download its knowledge. This study of dynamic networks from artificial, spiritual and biological environments digs into the politics of possibilities, where a techno-consciousness could nurture a mind-body-spirit-technology symbiosis.

Sugar Walls Teardom

Tabita Rezaire (French Guyana)

Sugar Walls Teardom reveals the contributions of Black womxn’s wombs to the advancement of modern medical science and technology. During slavery, Black womxn’s bodies were used and abused as commodities for laborious work in plantations, sexual slavery, reproductive exploitation and medical experiments. Anarcha, Betsey and Lucy, were among the captive guinea pigs of Dr. Marion Sims, the so-called ‘father of modern gynecology’, who tortured countless enslaved womxn in the name of science. Unacknowledged, Black womxn’s wombs have been central to the biomedical economy as the story of Henrietta Lacks – whose stolen cervix cells became the first immortal cells leading to medical breakthrough - reminds us. Biological warfare against Black womxn is still pervasive in today’s pharmaceutical industry. Sugar Walls Teardom celebrates womb technology through an account of coercive anatomic politics and pays homage to these wombs; their contributions have not been forgotten.

ANIMALS' SEXUAL CHANGES

Juliana Huxtable (US)
ANIMALS' SEXUAL CHANGES

Interfertility Industrial Complex 1, (main image: Cow 3)

Juliana Huxtable (US)
Interfertility Industrial Complex 1, (main image: Cow 3)

Interfertility Industrial Complex 3, (main image: Cow 3)

Juliana Huxtable (US)
Interfertility Industrial Complex 3, (main image: Cow 3)

Apathy

Martine Gutierrez (US)

< 3

Martine Gutierrez (US)

Please Note

Please Note

Interfertility Industrial Complex 2, (main image: Bat 2)

Juliana Huxtable (US)
Interfertility Industrial Complex 2, (main image: Bat 2)

"FEMALES ARE FEMALES!"

Juliana Huxtable (US)
"FEMALES ARE FEMALES!"

FACE OFF

Juliana Huxtable (US)
FACE OFF

BATS BITE BACK!!!

Juliana Huxtable (US)
BATS BITE BACK!!!

Matrix - fluid bodies, unlimited thoughts

Curated by Marina Paulenka

"History is in the flesh; it’s in the body. Fantasy is in the flesh; it’s in the body. Identification with the non-human and with the spiritual realm is in the flesh and in the body. It’s being performed in movement. It’s being enacted in language and on the dance floor. It’s all a complex matrix, to me, that makes it impossible to separate what the real and the fantastical are." —Juliana Huxtable Through the artworks of three multidisciplinary artists – Tabita Rezaire, Juliana Huxtable and Martine Gutierrez, the exhibition 'Matrix — fluid bodies, unlimited thoughts', curated by Marina Paulenka, examines the body as open to the possibility of control. Society, culture, environment, politics, science and technology as disciplinary practices but also as the driving force of the self, all have different impacts on the control of our bodies. Our experiences make us reconsider the idea that our bodies are closed units. As technology enables the production of the virtual [perfect] body, the traditional points of feminist critique become increasingly difficult. We are left to question what and whose body is it, how does it perform, and what is our relationship to these virtual images and the way they are presented. Paul B. Preciado says that there is no such thing as a gender without technology. Our bodies are both spaces of political control and centres of agency and resistance and they are subject to relentless, fast de-territorialisation and re-territorialisation.[1] More than machines and digital network, technology as disciplinary practices both subject us and produce us as subjects. [2] The body is a social and cultural tool and the right to define what a body is, has never been made an equal right. According to Legacy Russell, gender is a scaled economy, a way of regulation, management and control. It allows for the reification of process, the division of labour, and the exchange of value under the umbrella of capitalism. [3] Our individual bodies function like the expansion of global communication technologies. We are networked more than ever with many opportunities for mutual contact and information exchange. Our digital world has become not only an empowering secure space but also enables a growing visibility of marginalized groups via online portals. Our experiences in the real and virtual domains and at their point of intersection, shows that cyberspace is not a pattern or place for itself, separate from our real life, but affects how we see or experience our environment. The three artists in this exhibition – Tabita Rezaire, Juliana Huxtable and Martine Gutierrez share a common interest in exploring gender fluidity by using their bodies and identity as their primary subject, within a mostly online space as a place to re-present and re-perform personal gender identities. Generationally equal, all three artists are dealing with these topics from different perspectives and experiences as they play with the concept of gender roles from the perspective of social and media representation. Their work uses their own life experience as a point of departure, transforming physical and virtual space, as they are transformed into avatars, muses, performers, infinity incarnated into an agent of healing.[4] The way Tabita Rezaire explains her practice and understanding of technology is insightfully connected with healing and colonialism. For her, the architecture of cyberspace is a very discriminatory, isolating and sanctioning platform. The binary ideology is woven into the fabric of our social, cultural and political territories, which she examines in the work 'Ultra Wet – Recapitulation'. Her work, through image, language, form and movement, unites body, mind and spirit, asking us to confront difficult questions about the body, sexuality, gender and technology and the Internet. Through all her videoworks she endeavors to find cues, strategies and ways of connecting. The performance works – offerings – put into practice the research that her videos contain, in response to a desire for a more tangible connection. 'Sugar Walls Teardom' is an installation consisting of a gynecology chair with a mechanical arm where one could sit and watch a video. It directly references the female form and is very politically charged: it reveals the contributions of Black womxn’s wombs to the advancement of modern medical science and technology; central to the biomedical economy. During slavery, Black womxn’s bodies were used and abused as commodities for laborious work in plantations, sexual slavery, reproductive exploitation and medical experiments. Biological warfare against Black womxn is still pervasive in today’s pharmaceutical industry. The lines between different forms of Juliana Huxtable’s work are often fluid. Using a diverse set of means to engage issues such as race, gender, queerness and identity, including self-portraiture, text-based prints, performance, nightlife, music, writing, and social media. Huxtable, as an author and subject, by referencing her own body and history, as she examines socio-political issues. Despite some existentialist threads in her thinking, her body, experience and her structural position in the world influences what she understands to be truth as much as the structures that she is given. Huxtable is using fantasy as a way to make a metaphor of something that is already there. Her body is not something isolated and separate from the larger questions of fantasy, history and performance, the body is the avatar; and the avatar is as much in the data fields as the system it has come to represent – it is an always-changing story.[6] In that sense, 'Infertility Industrial Complex: Snatch the Calf Back', represents an era in which so many things are being read through the context of visibility and liberations of certain groups. Drawing on ideas of genetic modification, fetish, and zoophilia while critiquing industrial farming, this artwork is about visibility economy and identity politics and about taking over-performing humanness to its limit. Looking at the work we can see how she uses symbolism to express the exploitation of female sexuality. A woman, pinned down to a fence and being forcefully milked is raising many questions of ethics, dairy and meat industry. It makes the viewer contemplate elements of consent, not only in the case of women but also animals. Martine Gutierrez explores gender, sexuality, race and class, as well as conventional ideals of beauty and identity. Acting as subject and producer, the artist creates photographs, music, billboard campaigns, films, performances, and satirical ads that juxtapose the consumable with the genuine. Interested in the ambiguous fluidity of relationships and the role of genders, her video works combine costume, photography and film. Gutierrez produces complex narrative scenes that use the symbolism of pop culture to reveal (gender) identity as a social construct. Gutierrez accompanies each film, which documents her transformative performance, with her own original music. While in her never-before-shown film work Hear she sings “I’m alone, I don’t need your love anymore …”, while she walks alone on a beautiful sunny day watching people sitting in the grass and exchanging love, touches and kisses. Recorded almost in a guerrilla style in Chile on Valentine’s Day, the film exposes the variety of love in different types of relationships. Gutierrez produced 'Indigenous Woman', an artist book in a popular glossy magazine format focussed on the subversion of white, western standards of beauty. Filled with beauty ads, fashion spreads and a letter from the editor—all featuring Gutierrez herself as model, stylist, photographer, writer, and editor. Some works parody fetishised representations of ethnic identity, while the 'Body En Thrall' series consists of large black and white prints in which Gutierrez appears surrounded by mannequins, which have fascinated her since high school. In her recent body of work, 'China Doll', Gutierrez once again plays the titular role which is the mirror, a counterpart to 'Indigenous Woman' – she is a blonde woman now, an avatar, the epitome of femininity and the product of Hollywood’s highest ideals. [7] In this exhibition, curated for FORMAT21, the artists, Rezaire, Huxtable and Gutierrez, share and resist the limitations of predetermined understanding through the transformation of physical space and composed-self. By investigating the body and identity—both personal and collective — they demonstrate how our (techno) bodies can blur stereotypical boundaries, challenge media representations and breakdown the structures that are intended to control us. Attributions: [1] Ropek Hewson, Sofia: Pharmacopornographic Subjectivity in the Work of Paul B. Preciado, Pembroke College, 2018 [2] Beatriz Preciado,Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era, New York: The Feminist Press, page 34 [3] Russel, Legacy: Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto, Verso, 2020, Page 89 [4] https://www.tabitarezaire.com/ [5] www.goodman-gallery.com/store/shop?ref_id=33581 [6] Juliana Huxtable: Play with Truth, METAL Magazine, issue 43 [7]https://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/the-artist-martine-gutierrez-goes-blond

Matrix - fluid bodies, unlimited thoughts

Famous Internet Sites

Zou Jingyao

Curated by Luo Dawei The term ‘online sensation’ has become a universal saying that has been used in almost every aspect of our lives in recent times. Originally, it referred to and meant “gaining sudden popularity” on the internet. Now it refers to hot and novel trends and places including but not restricted to cities, tourist attractions and food. As people’s interest grows in taking a snapshot (usually on their phones) at sites made famous by the internet, the phenomenon of internet famous exhibitions has in turn become an important means for people and organisations to attract public attention and gain media coverage. The exhibition Famous Internet Sites focuses on places suddenly made famous by the internet, featuring what could also be described as ‘flash mob exhibitions’. This term, coined overseas (that is, outside of China) is a type of immersive exhibition held for recreational aims. By using Macron-colored installations, mirrors, and balloons combined with VR, projections and other new media tools, it creates a fantasy world consisting of sound, light and electricity. This kind of exhibition is mostly held in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen and occasionally makes its way into other big cities. Most often, it is held in large comprehensive shopping malls located in key business zones, on squares where there is a large visitor flow or streets with busy businesses. Visitors – who come to these exhibitions in a seemingly endless stream – are usually driven by one purpose: take a snap on their phones and share it on social media. In 2018 Zou Jingyao began to show an interest in the phenomenon of people “visiting famous internet sites”. Since then, he has collected information on internet-famous exhibitions through various channels and recorded more than 30 exhibitions in Beijing, Shanghai and other major cities in the form of pictures, video or sound. In addition to this he also viewed many other exhibitions on social media platforms. The exhibition Famous Internet Sites by artist Zou Jingyao, curated by Lou Dawei was awarded the Lishui/FORMAT Award 2019, selected by Louise Fedotov-Clements and Laura O’Leary as part of FORMAT’s ongoing partnership with Lishui International Photography Festival, China.

Famous Internet Sites

Ultra Wet - Recapitualtion

Tabita Rezaire

Ultra Wet - Recapitulation

Tabita Rezaire