Auto Body
Auto Body featuring works by 33 international female artists, with a focus on Miami based artists, the time-based project will include a dynamic installation of 25 videos and a daily performance program.
The exhibition will be staged at the defunct, 7,500 square-foot Giant Motors: Auto Body & Paint Shop, less than one mile away from the Miami Beach Convention Center. Selected artists were nominated by a curatorial platform consisting of over 25 international female curators.
A local curatorial advisory committee consisting of: Ximena Caminos (Director/Chief Curator, Faena Art Buenos Aires and Faena Forum Miami Beach), Tami Katz-Freiman (Independent Curator, former Chief Curator, Haifa Museum of Art), Brandi Reddick (Curator/Artists Manager, Miami-Dade County Art in Public Places), and Chana Budgazad Sheldon(Executive Director, Locust Projects), who are making significant contributions to the Miami art community, selected the final works. Auto Body is a traveling exhibition. In the next year, Auto Body will travel to Faena Art Buenos Aires, running concurrently with the debut of Bienal Performance 2015 and ArteBA 2015. As the show travels, the amount of participating artists will increase and continue to become more diverse. In each new location there will be a local focus allowing new conversations to take shape. Auto Body is a non-commercial, W.A.G.E. Certified project produced by Miami based Spinello Projects.
Auto Body presents performativity as a powerful vehicle for transcendence, movement and transformation. By examining the political and economic inequalities of the art world, Auto Body serves as a platform for a variety of female voices. Focusing on time based practices as an alternative to an object driven market, this exhibition presents the body as language. From budding YoungArts U.S. Presidential Scholar Paloma Izquierdo to 2014 Whitney Biennial artist A.L. Steiner, Auto Body will present a multi-generational scope of artists.
Overarching themes of “voice” collide at Auto Body. María José Arjona‘s (b. 1973, Colombia) Right At The Center There Is Silence, consisting of four microphone stands each holding a razor blade to her neck, denotes a specific danger in silence or speaking. Untitled Sept 16, 2011 by Tameka Norris (b. 1979, Guam), who is currently exhibiting in Radical Presence at the Walker Art Center Minneapolis, continues this conversation of suspense, tension and the struggle for speech.
Two videos examine the tensions of border politics existing on opposite sides of the globe. In Pippi Longstocking, The Strongest Girl in the World, at Abu Dis, Rona Yefman‘s (b. 1972, Israel) alter ego absurdly attempts to move the dividing concrete wall between Israel and the Palestine territories. Similarly, Regina José Galindo‘s (b. 1973, Colombia) debut video presentation of her latest performance Combustible, tests the boundaries of immigration and the fragilities of coexistence.
2014 Whitney Biennial artist Zackary Drucker‘s (b. 1983, US) video, from the live performance The Inability to be Looked At and The Horror of Nothing to See, explores masochistic identity construction, new-age tyranny, and collective experience. Unraveling gender inequalities within the systems of the art world, Micol Hebron (b. 1972, US) will perform Roll Call, a reference to Carolee Schneemann’s Interior Scroll.
Works that deal with endurance will open and close the performance program. Cheryl Pope (b. 1980, US) in Up Against, will knock down 700 water filled balloons, suspended from the ceiling, with only her head. In Untitled (Babies), Naama Tsabar (b. 1982, Israel) commands the stage with an all female band. The performance eventually becomes a scene of assault, imitating a hackneyed male rock ‘n’ roll gesture.
Rock musician, performance and interdisciplinary artist Kembra Pfahler (b. 1961, US), who’s known for transgressive and extremely decorative physicality, will drive in to Auto Body conjuring up a provocative performance entitled P.L.O.W. (Punk Ladies Of Wrestling). With original music by her theatrical death rock band “The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black,” Kembra and an all female backup crew will resurrect the defunct mechanics workshop with a campy pin-up car modeling performance.
Activating the site with an ongoing performance, Miami-based Agustina Woodgate (b. 1981, Argentina) sets up shop and goes live on air with Radio Espacio Estacion. The bilingual, nomadic, online, event-based radio transmission will host a temporary cultural platform inviting female local voices to represent the city with sound, music, conversation, and language experiments, addressing topics of movement, migrations and economy.
