Art Contract

Linen Embroideries

Large Canvas 4

Cut Out Map

Counting Seconds Book ICA-London

My Surgery

Sculpture Book

Map Books

South Island

Valencia Embroidery

Simplified Map

Days Left in a Year Chart

First Embroidery

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2001-2006Cartas originales, 3 cartas impresasOriginal letters, 3 printed letters29,7 x 21 cm

201816 piezas. Bordados, hilo sobre tela 16 pieces. Embroideries, thread on fabric50 x 70 cm eachPiezas únicas / Unique pieces

20174 piezas. Bordados, hilo sobre lino4 pieces. Embroideries, thread on linen39 x 40 cm eachPiezas únicas / Unique pieces

20085 mapas. Lápiz sobre etiquetas de cartón5 maps. Pen on paper labels18 x 10 cm eachPiezas únicas / Unique pieces

199352 piezas: 30 fichas + 22 recortes papel Canson, con bolígrafo negro52 pieces: 30 cards + 22 cutouts Canson Paper, with black pen21 x 14 cm eachPiezas únicas / Unique pieces

1994Un libro A4, lápiz sobre papelOne A4 book, pen on paper29.7 x 21 cmPiezas únicas / Unique pieces

201818 piezas. Pluma sobre papel envejecido18 pieces. Pen on aged paper11.7 x 6.5 cm eachPiezas únicas / Unique pieces

1988-1990Libro A4, bolígrafo y líquido blancoA4 book, pen and liquid white out29,7 x 21 cmPiezas únicas / Unique pieces

2007 (selection)4 libros intervenidos4 intervened books29.7 x 21 cm eachPiezas únicas / Unique pieces

1991365 piezas de tela intervenidas365 pieces of cloth intervened61 x 13 cm eachPiezas únicas / Unique pieces

1988Acrílico sobre lienzoAcrylic on canvas86 x 96 cm totalPieza única (4 partes) / Unique piece (4 parts)

201312 piezas. Bordados, hilo sobre tela negra12 pieces. Embroideries, thread on black cloth116 x 232 cm eachPiezas únicas / Unique pieces

In this performance, I drafted an Art Contract that was used when I interacted with art spaces interested in exhibiting my work. The contract questioned the role art played in Artwash for large financial groups. My dialogue with the Art System was exclusively Art Contract. The Art Contract was used from 2001 to 2016 mediated by the Art Contract. The Art Contract was used from 2001 to 2016.

“The artist numbers her maps and collages with a code that includes several items which

are not always used in the same order. In this numerical code of sorts one can make out the date or the numbering of drawings

and works … but also other figures that respond to the numbers of days since a

certain meaningful day in her life (weddings, divorces, medical operations) or the days

remaining until the end of the year.”Álvaro de los Ángeles.

Excerpts from the text “Being Archive”

“Everything is noted; every ordinary action she does is reflected in the maps as a

statement of her existence, with the goal of putting life on hold and becoming fully

conscious of its passing.”

“A map is the certification of something that originally seemed ungraspable

and unintelligible, concentrating it into a manageable space and making it

understandable. A translation that draws space and compresses time. Something akin to what Ana Amorim does in inventorying her

everyday contribution to the world.”

“Her Map Books are compilations of the maps made from her chronicling of her

everyday routes and routines. Every day, a map; every year, one or various books. And so on over the course of her decade-long

project 10 Year Performance Project 1988-1997.”

Ana Amorim: This project started January 1st 2013 and was completed June 2017. The daily maps of the year 2013 were embroidered on 12 large black cloths, one for each month of the year. The act of embroidery was a performance on its own.

“In her Counting Seconds Performance is to count the seconds for various hours. For each second, she makes a small horizontal

mark on the page of a notebook. She carries out this practice not just in public spaces (the artist sitting at a table and a notebook

full of lines), but also as an everyday action. Every day, for one hour, Ana Amorim counts

the seconds and makes a note of them.”

Ana Amorim: Fabric strip with map in 2 colors, black for routines and red for routes that were not part of my routine, one hour Counting Seconds Performance in my own time and sewed piece of fabric from my surroundings

details

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2005365 mapas en etiquetas de cartón envejecido, dibujados con bolígrafo365 maps on aged cardboard labels, drawn with ballpoint pen 7.8 x 16 cm eachPiezas únicas / Unique pieces

Ana Amorim São Paulo, 195631052019 - 5,160 - 215 - 62 / 13092019 - 2,640 - 110 - 63

In 1988, I decided that my life was art. I understood art as a sequence of meaningful mental and emotional experiences deeply rooted in my surroundings and in the significant relations I established in my everyday life. That same year, I started the 10 Year Performance Project (1988-1997).

This project consisted in me registering daily mental maps in books (Map Books), at the end of each day, for a period of 10 years. These maps would later be transferred to different supports called Large Canvases (Map Projects), consisting of large calendar year series of works.The guidelines for this project were:1. The project would have a duration of 10 years, ending in 1997.2. The maps would be produced every day, at the end of each day.3. The maps produced would serve as raw material for the Large Canvases, which are large calendar-year Map Projects in different mediums.4. I would use as little time as possible in producing the maps.5. I would use inexpensive materials.6. I would only exhibit in free or public spaces, that would not charge for admission.7. I would not sell the work.

Being Archive

When Gilles Deleuze said about Michel Foucault that “a new archivist has been appointed”, he was laying the foundations for a new way of understanding and of relating with ourselves through data, information and bodies. Especially after Foucault certified the figurative death of the library as a sacred space of knowledge and announced the archive as a democratizing replacement of thought. Well conversant with the theories of both philosophers, Professor Miguel Morey argued that the archive is what we fall back on when we want to learn more about the evils of our time, though of course after first having pinpointed what they are. Jacques Derrida first spoke, and then wrote, about the archive as a symbol of both the ‘origin’ and the ‘control’ of power, and foresaw that archive

Ser archivo

Cuando Gilles Deleuze escribió de Michel Foucault que «un nuevo archivista hay en la ciudad», asentó el pilar fundacional de una manera nueva de entendernos y relacionarnos a partir de los datos, la información y los cuerpos. Sobre todo, después de que Foucault certificara el fin figurado de la biblioteca como espacio sacrosanto del conocimiento para anunciar al archivo como sustituto democratizador del pensamiento. Un amplio conocedor de las teorías de ambos, el profesor Miguel Morey, concretó que el archivo es aquello a lo que recurriríamos para determinar qué sabemos de los males de nuestro tiempo, una vez concretados cuáles serían estos. Jacques Derrida habló primero, para escribirlo después, que el archivo simboliza tanto el «origen» como el «control» de su poder, y supo ver en perspectiva que el mal de archivo se asentaría en las sociedades occidentales de manera viral. Por supuesto, el arte contemporáneo abrazó estas formulaciones del espacio, el tiempo y los deseos como quien se convierte a un nuevo dogma: sin mirar atrás, ni valorar las ventajas o los inconvenientes futuros derivados de tales decisiones. El historiador Aby Warburg se inventó una «ciencia sin nombre» que reescribía la historia del arte a partir de la buena vecindad entre imágenes (en su Atlas Mnemosyne), aparecidas como constelaciones simbólicas relacionales; y también y —al mismo tiempo— entre libros, en su sofisticada y obsesiva biblioteca. Hanne Darboven y Gerhard Richter conformaron atlas de documentación e imágenes y reflejaron la complejidad de la historia alemana del shock tras la II guerra mundial, cuando reflexionar sobre su pasado nacional solo parecía poder hacerse desde una suerte de terapia visual compilatoria. La cantidad de elementos suponían, en este caso, una nueva valoración cualitativa del duelo. On Kawara se mantuvo firme en la escrupulosa certificación del día a día como una marca reconocible: un registro del tiempo vivido del que sería prisionero y cuya acción pictórica devenía, paradójicamente, su propia liberación. Ana Amorim incluye, además del registro de su actividad, la acción del tiempo diario en un espacio físico concreto y la hiper consciencia del paso del tiempo en sus acciones donde contabiliza y anota los segundos transcurridos. En el primer número de la Internacional Situacionista se hablaba en estos términos de lo que suponía la construcción de una situación: «La situación se hace para ser vivida por sus constructores» y, más adelante: «La situación es también una unidad de comportamiento en el tiempo. Está formada por los gestos comprendidos en el escenario de un momento». Ana Amorim no construye situaciones strictu sensu puesto que estas no se organizan colectivamente o para una colectividad, pero resulta bastante claro que sus recorridos, que después derivan en mapas encriptados y difíciles de interpretar para el público que no ha transitado esos espacios, son unidades de comportamiento en el tiempo. Los elementos que determinan el trabajo reconocible de Amorim son las tareas diarias vinculadas a su vida, y la compilación de estas en sus mapas. Para Borges, un mapa era un laberinto y su solución, mientras que Baudrillard lo pretendía como simulacro del espacio real que representaba, es decir, como suplantación. Didi-Huberman le otorga una función social al hacerlo descender del muro sacralizado del arte para situarlo sobre la mesa: el tablero de juego de una acción colectiva que ensaya lo simbólico a partir de la puesta en común de unas instrucciones derivadas de lo real. Pero, ante todo, un mapa es la certificación de aquello que aparece originalmente como inabarcable e ininteligible, para concentrarlo en un espacio reducido y hacerlo comprensible. Una traducción que dibuja el espacio y comprime el tiempo. Algo así como lo que Ana Amorim resume de su diaria aportación al mundo. Convendría empezar por un principio, el compromiso personal de la artista brasileña (São Paulo, 1956) con su propia obra. En 2001 realiza una pieza conceptual que es en efecto un contrato (Art Contract), por el que se compromete a no exponer ninguno de sus trabajos en cualquier espacio público o privado que utilice una marca o logotipo distintivo. Aunque esta actitud la inició

realmente en 1988, cuando Amorim asumió la simbiosis inseparable existente entre su vida y su producción artística. Una sería el resultado de la otra que, a su vez, no podría ya ser la misma sabiendo que cualquier cosa que viviera, por banal que pudiera parecer, devendría pieza artística o se integraría en su producción. Sus Map books son la compilación de los mapas realizados a partir del registro de sus recorridos y quehaceres diarios. Cada día, un mapa; cada año, uno o varios libros. Así durante los diez años de su proyecto 10 Year Performance Project 1988-1997. El contrato ha estado vigente hasta 2016, y ahora, al exponer por primera vez en una galería y también en España, su posición personal y profesional es otra bien distinta, pero persisten insobornablemente su análisis y su registro obsesivo del tiempo. Las acciones, cualquier acción, incluyen el tiempo dentro del espacio. Actúan como el sonido, o de forma similar a la música. Las performances de Ana Amorim son en esencia un análisis de ese componente temporal que toda acción lleva implícito. En sus Counting Seconds Performance lo que hace es contar los segundos durante varias horas. Por cada segundo, una pequeña marca horizontal escrita sobre la hoja de un cuaderno. Esta práctica la desarrolla no solo en espacios públicos (la artista sentada detrás de una mesa y un cuaderno llenándose de líneas), sino también como acción diaria. Todos los días, durante una hora, Ana Amorim cuenta los segundos y los anota. Esta pasión por el paso del tiempo y su obsesión por registrarlo deriva, en cierta manera y analizado en perspectiva, de las prácticas también diarias realizadas por su padre. Él convirtió la casa familiar en un espacio habitado por relojes y calendarios; fue un caminante amante de la naturaleza que, durante y después de sus paseos diarios, anotaba las condiciones climatológicas, el espacio recorrido, las horas y minutos invertidos… El tiempo se muestra en proceso constante de destilación. La artista enumera sus mapas y collages con una cifra que incluye varios ítems no siempre fijos o empleados en un mismo orden. En esta suerte de código numérico podemos entrever la fecha o la numeración de los dibujos u obras… pero también otras cifras que responden a los días transcurridos desde algunas fechas señaladas en su vida (matrimonios, divorcios, operaciones médicas) o los días restantes para que el año actual (o el del dibujo en cuestión) concluya. Todo queda anotado; cualquier acción diaria que realice aparece reflejada en los mapas como una constatación de su existencia, con la finalidad de «detener la vida» y hacerse plenamente consciente de su paso. Pocas veces tenemos la oportunidad de descubrir un trabajo artístico de tal magnitud —representando una vida entera dedicada a su propia consciencia vital— tan de golpe y de una manera tan variada y extensa. En contadas ocasiones se nos presentan ejercicios vitales y artísticos tan irremediablemente fusionados, de tal coherencia y pormenor. Ana Amorim no es solo una artista que trabaja en el ámbito —tan empleado y también tan desgastado— de lo archivístico; ella es un archivo en sí misma y su principal acción, parece decirnos, es ser archivo.

Álvaro de los Ángeles

fever would spread like a virus in Western societies. Of course, contemporary art embraced these formulations of space, time and desire like a convert to a new dogma: without looking back, nor weighing up the future benefits or drawbacks resulting from such a decision. The historian Aby Warburg invented a ‘nameless science’ which rewrote the history of art based on the harmonious contiguity between images (in his Atlas Mnemosyne) as symbolic relational constellations; and also, and at the same time, between books, in his sophisticated and obsessive library. Hanne Darboven and Gerhard Richter created atlases of documentation and images that mirrored the complexity of German history and the shock following World War II, when it seemed as if looking back over their national past could only be done through a kind of compilationary visual therapy. In this case, the quantity of elements meant a new qualitative evaluation of the mourning. On Kawara was steadfast in his scrupulous certification of the day-by-day as a signature trademark: a recording of lived time of which he would be a prisoner and whose painterly enactment would paradoxically become his own liberation. Besides registering her activity, Ana Amorim also includes the action of daily time in a specific physical place and the heightened consciousness of the passing of time in actions in which she counts seconds and notes them as they transpire. The first issue of the Situationist International addressed the meaning of the construction of a situation in the following terms: “The situation is made to be lived by its builders” and then, later on: “The situation is also a unitary ensemble of behaviour in time. It is composed of gestures contained in a transitory décor.” Ana Amorim does not build situations per se given that she does not organize them collectively or for a collective, but it is fairly obvious that her routes, which later become encrypted maps that may be difficult to read for a public who has not been in these spaces, are units of behaviour in time. The elements that condition Amorim’s signature work are the everyday routines associated with her life and their subsequent rendering in maps. For Borges, a map was a labyrinth and its solution, while for Baudrillard it is more of a simulacrum of the real space it represents; in other words, its replacement. Didi-Huberman gave the map a social function by taking it down from the sacralised wall of art and situating it on the table: the board for a collective action that plays with the symbolic through consensual instructions derived from the real. But, above all else, a map is the certification of something that originally seemed ungraspable and unintelligible, concentrating it into a manageable space and making it understandable. A translation that draws space and compresses time. Something akin to what Ana Amorim does in inventorying her everyday contribution to the world. It is probably best to start at the beginning, the personal commitment of the Brazilian artist (São Paulo, 1956) with her own work. In 2001 she made a conceptual work (Art Contract), which was effectively a contract by which she agreed not to exhibit her work in any public or private space that uses a distinctive brand or logo. In fact, she had actually already taken on this commitment in 1988, when she accepted the inseparable symbiosis between her life and her artistic production. The latter would be the product of the former, which, in turn, would never be the same again in the knowledge that anything she does, however banal it might seem, would become part of an artwork. Her Map Books are compilations of the maps made from her chronicling of her everyday routes and routines. Every day, a map; every year, one or various books. And so on over the course of her decade-long project 10 Year Performance Project 1988-1997. The contract remained in force until 2016, and now, by exhibiting in a gallery and also in Spain for the very first time, her personal and professional position is utterly different, but she resolutely continues her analysis and her obsessive recording of time with the same uncompromising attitude. Actions, any action, include time within space. They function similarly to sound or to music. Ana Amorim’s performances are in essence an analysis of this temporal component implicit in any action. What she does in her Counting Seconds Performance is to count the seconds for various hours. For each second, she makes a small horizontal mark on the page of a notebook. She carries out this practice not just in public spaces (the artist sitting at a table and a notebook full of lines), but also as an everyday action. Every day, for one hour, Ana Amorim counts the seconds and makes a note of them. In a certain way, and analysed with hindsight, this passion for the passing of time and her obsession for recording comes from her father’s equally everyday practices. He filled the

family home with clocks and calendars; he loved trekking in nature and, during and after his daily walk, he would make notes of the weather conditions, the route he had taken, the hours and minutes it had taken him, and so on. Time is expressed in the constant process of distillation. The artist numbers her maps and collages with a code that includes several items which are not always used in the same order. In this numerical code of sorts one can make out the date or the numbering of drawings and works … but also other figures that respond to the numbers of days since a certain meaningful day in her life (weddings, divorces, medical operations) or the days remaining until the end of the year (or the drawing in question). Everything is noted; every ordinary action she does is reflected in the maps as a statement of her existence, with the goal of “putting life on hold” and becoming fully conscious of its passing. We seldom have the chance to discover a body of work of this magnitude —representing a life dedicated to its own consciousness— all at once and in such a varied and extensive manner. It is seldom that we are presented with vital and artistic exercises so inextricably bound together, of such coherence and detail. Ana Amorim is not an artist who works in the hackneyed field of the archive; she is an archive in herself and, she seems to tell us, her chief action is being an archive.

Álvaro de los Ángeles

ANA AMORIM

espacio #1 - galeríaANA AMORIM31 / 05 / 2019 - 13 / 09 / 2019Inauguración / Opening:Viernes, 31 Mayo 2019, 20:00 h / Friday, 31st, May 2019, 20:00 h

espaivisorDirectores: Miriam Lozano y Mira Bernabeu

C/ Carrasquer 2, 46001, Valencia. España+34 96 392 23 99 +34 628 88 12 45

info@espaivisor.com www.espaivisor.comlunes-viernes. de 10.00 a 14.00 h. y de 16.00 a 20.00 h. sábado.cita previa

espacio #2 - showcaseIn collaboration with Galerie Eric Mouchet, ParisBérénice Lefebvre

Bérénice Lefebvre visual artist’s approach unfolds around different artistic fields such as multiple, sculpture and photography. This is part of a daily survey of urban space, territory from which we can observe a multiplication of frames and screens. All these surfaces, physical or pictorial, reflect a plurality of forms that constitute an important part of her formal repertoire, particularly those that can be extracted from certain networks of dense buildings, often located in peri-urban areas. From her perspective as a walker, however, it is impossible to perceive the city from the outset: it necessarily passes to the eyes of the screen status. She strive to reconstruct the contours of this urban territory by accumulating its representations, whether three-dimensional or planar, sculptures / images. She thus establish a documentary corpus where each piece becomes organ of a dislocated architectural body. This omnipresence of the document as a source inscribes the work of Bérénice Lefebvre in this contemporary movement of art wich tends to look towards the archive. In the same way, through her collages and her manipulations, Bérénice Lefebvre asserts her subjective choice and shakes that authority of the archive. Through reconstructions, her works created new frames and new screens on which cling our respective imaginations. From one fragment to another, there is the question of a future in suspense, a dynamic expectation generated by the impulse of a changing urban territory. Insatiable walker in search of modern architectures, Bérénice Lefebvre tirelessly explores the urban peripheries armed with her digital camera. Throughout the streets, she brings together a whole body of black and white clichés that represent, first and foremost, the study of a given territory. This physical experience of the walk leaves indeed a personal cartography of the space. But once in the studio, these images become a material in their own right, the subject of multiple mechanical manipulations and photosensitive experiments. Bérénice Lefebvre triturates, reproduces, isolates a detail, cut, size, frame and reframes photoshope these images gleaned over these wanderings. These pieces of architecture, these fragments of buildings, these textures and these volumes become the cement of the fictional environments of the artist. Empty of any human presence, its large format photomontages are in the form of immense rolls suspended on the walls, or in the form of adhesives glued on the glass walls, but also in the form of editions. Through these assemblages of sprawling architectural bodies that make us lose all reference, another landscape escaping the unusual perspectives appears to us. Through her works that always favor the context for which they are conceived, this young artist nourished by the writings of Rem Koolhas sees architecture as a living organism and wonders about the city, its mutations, its development, its expansion.“

Leo Marin